


Coming Clean

by Animom



Series: Temenos [3]
Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Angst, Distrust, Drama, M/M, Past Sexual Assault, Recovery, Shame, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-12-29
Updated: 2010-09-01
Packaged: 2017-10-14 04:45:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 11
Words: 45,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/145516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Animom/pseuds/Animom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From Duelist Kingdom to ancient Egypt, Kaiba struggles to transcend his poisonous past - but how is connection possible when kindness is unbearable? ** Primarily a character study. Dark themes, harsh language, esoteric topics, brotherly fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Helicopter

**Author's Note:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> This fiction, the sequel to _KP Duty,_ strives to follow canon characterizations and events as presented in the unedited anime. However, because two key characters (Pegasus and Gozaburo) have been purposefully distorted, these stories are unquestionably AU.

 

Seto Kaiba stood on the rooftop of Pegasus's castle, in the same place he had stood just a few days before to battle Yugi Mutou. That day, everything had been clear in the shadowless noon light: goals, priorities, possibilities. His determination a white hot blaze, he had stood on the edge, gambling with his life; so sure of his abilities, and in his understanding of his opponent, that of course he had won.

Now, it was nearing sunset. Shadows were long and the rooftop red-orange. Mokuba was safe, Pegasus was defeated, Yugi had his Grandfather back. It was a different precipice now, every last scrap of his energy holding up the mask for his brother.

"What are we waiting for, big brother?" Mokuba asked. "Yugi told me you flew a chopper in here when you came to rescue me. Let's go down and get it, and go home."

Seto was not going to fly out of here, not when the temptation to take the controls and dive downward to cold oblivion might overpower him. He couldn't allow it. But he wasn't about to leave his helicopters here for Pegasus's minions to play with, either. "I called for two pilots to fly out a second chopper. We'll wait for them up here, where they can see us."

A convenient cover, because he wasn't sure he was capable of descending the hundreds of stairs to the forest where he'd hidden the helicopter he'd flown to Duelist Kingdom several days before. The reason – reasons – were spelled out on a piece of paper, folded small and tucked deep in the innermost pocket of his coat, a piece of paper that listed injuries he had sustained while soulless. A sprained ankle, a dislocated shoulder, contusions on his abdomen and back from being kicked and beaten. And other injuries, from more than a beating: abraded knees, burns and lacerations on his inner thighs, torn tissues in places that a mere beating wouldn't have accomplished.

It almost made him laugh, to think that his dominant feeling at the moment was anger: anger that that Gozaburo had been right about Pegasus after all.

He needed anger right now to block out the other emotions. Never before, with all he had gone through – the orphanage, his adoptive father's cruelty, the mind-crushing Game Penalty of his first dueling defeat – had he felt this way. Torn open, hollowed out, trampled. Filthy. Degraded. Disgraced.

"Ow!"

He suddenly came back to himself. He had been squeezing Mokuba's hand. Too hard. Mokuba had let go and was now sitting on a stone bench near the roof's crenelated edge.

"Come sit, big brother." Mokuba patted the stone.

Kaiba shook his head.

"Why not? There's room."

He took a deep breath. "Mokuba," he started; then, "Mokuba, while I was a prisoner," he rubbed his hand over his eyes, "the stone floor in the cell – I don't want to sit."

"What did they do to you?" Mokuba's eyes flashed, simultaneously solicitous and angry. "You're gonna be OK, right?"

"My shoulder is sore," Kaiba said, pretending to search the fiery sky while his throat closed up. "I'll be fine."

The chopper touched down a few minutes later. "I'm going to say goodbye to Yugi!" Mokuba shouted and ran off to the group by the front doors.

His pilots, Quinn and Brasher, confirmed that there was still more than enough light to fly the other chopper up out of the woods, so Quinn ran down the stone stairs. A few minutes later Mokuba came back onto the roof, Yugi and his friends following at a discreet distance.

"Seto ..." Mokuba began."Can they ride the helicopter with us? Please?"

 _No way in hell._ "There are only three seats in the chopper."

"But we have _two choppers_! And anyhow I told Yugi he could share the front seat with me so that we can both watch the pilot. We're both small."

He knew this look on Mokuba's face: it meant that he wouldn't listen to reason or authority at this point, so there was no use invoking either. Not that he had the energy to do it. "OK." He gave the group his sternest look. "This is payment for rescuing Mokuba, understood?" Without waiting for their answer he turned to the copter and climbed in, tucking himself into the left back seat.

After Yugi and Mokuba piled in the seat ahead of him (Brasher buckled them in together), Mai slipped into the seat next to him. "I think everyone else went down to the other chopper," she said.

_Might not be too bad._

Suddenly a commotion at the door."Phew! I thought I'd missed the boat, er, the copter!" The blond appeared in the doorway. "Hey Yug, riding shotgun? Cool." He looked at Mai, raised an eyebrow. "Ya think you could squash over some there, ma'am, make room for me?"

"The back seats two." Seto said firmly.

"Seat, schmeat, plenty of room on the floor!" And with that he turned around, sat on the floor, and slid backwards into the row between the seats, his back to Seto, and pulled his legs up and clear of the door.

"All set?" Brasher yelled, and then they rose into the air, to the west, the sun flooding the chopper with amber.

.

Seto'd always had the trick of going elsewhere.

It had started in the orphanage. Often, after he'd given most of his meal to Mokuba, to distract himself from his hunger he'd pull back from the reality outside of him and go hiking someplace beautiful. The arctic, a jungle, a desert, the moon. Or he'd become a falcon, soaring over wilderness looking for prey, or a submarine diving through darkness, his floodlight startling fantastical deep sea creatures. After they were first adopted, he went though an astrophysics phase. He became an atom at the heart of a sun, sizzling as the pressure of the solar furnace changed him from hydrogen to helium to carbon to iron. A few years later, when Gozaburo started using the cane, and the collar, and the room with the pulley, he'd imagine he was pure number, without any physical existence at all: he'd become a series of primes sparkling down from the Sieve of Eratosthenes; or the digits of _pi_ soaring and diving through n-dimensions of concentric circles; or the Penrose ratio, orchestrating vast plains of interlocking kites and darts. And sometimes he was simply a spiraling Fibonacci sequence, infinite.

He'd been in such complete control of his life the last few years he'd not needed this trick: unfortunately, it seemed to have atrophied, for he couldn't escape the helicopter. In the seat in front of him, Mokuba (on the left) and Yugi (on the right) chattered nonstop about the various dials and controls, Brasher in the right hand seat making the occasional correction. "No, those are the torque pedals." Next to him was worse. They had been in the air less than five minutes when the blond made a big show of pulling off his jacket and spreading it across Mai's mini-skirted thighs and knees. He then seemed to think this gallantry entitled him to some reward, for he draped his right arm casually across her lap. She wrinkled her nose and said something to him with a half-smile; he said something back, obviously some playful challenge, for she mock-slapped him and stuck out her tongue prettily.

How easy it came to them. _Friendship_.

After a while, Yugi leaned between the seats to talk to the other two. From time to time he turned back to include Mokuba in the conversation, in the circle of friends. How had Mokuba learned to make connections so easily?

Between the roar of the rotors and the blond's big head, Seto could make out scraps of conversation:

"Wasn't it cool when we – "

"Did you see when Pegasus – "

"That was such a great move when you "

"Wasn't it sad when – "

"Oh Mokuba, you never told us what happened when – "

No, he couldn't hear much, pressed back into the corner, but he could see. They were burnished with sunset, their hair threaded with copper and gold. Glowing, smiling, laughing. Fire elementals, seraphim. From his darkness he noticed how they were with each other, touching so freely, with such affection. Of course he was not included. They were in his chopper, but they were all oblivious to _him_. Take the blond for example: leaning against him, true, but only because he was using the side of Seto's leg as a chair back. The touch meant nothing. He was _furniture_.

The bad guy, he knew that's how they saw him (if they thought of him at all). And why shouldn't they? He'd almost killed Yugi's grandfather when he'd taken the fourth Blue Eyes by force, taken advantage of his inherent decency to defeat his Dark, and rejected every offer of help during his duel with Pegasus. On top of which, of course, he was the rich guy, the "ruin the curve" guy, the "taller than you" guy. They had probably hated him long before Duelist Kingdom, because he must have seemed to lead such a favored life. Yeah, he'd been favored all right. Wasn't he was _doubly_ favored now, having received favors from both Gozaburo and Pegasus?

 _Who cares what they think?_ He gripped the edge of his seat with his left hand, the protest from his injured shoulder welcome. _It's not like they need another reason to exclude me. My life is none of their business._

As he sat, rigid with fury, he finally began to feel the familiar floating sensation that presaged the blessed falling inward, away from his body, away from the world's noise and light and pain. He might have found himself soaring the thermals as a hawk again had two things not happened. First, the pressure against his leg was having an unexpected effect, which was intensifying with every small casual movement the blond made as he laughed and talked. Second, when that very same clueless idiot twisted, a moment later, to lean between the front seats to talk to Yugi and Mokuba, he put his hand down on Seto's right foot. The sprained one with the hairline fracture. The sudden pain took him by surprise and he gave a small cry.

At that point all sound in the cabin was swallowed up. Even the rotors seemed to mute.

'Hey man, you OK?" the blond twisted back around, and the hand that had been draped over Mai's lap now moved to Seto's thigh, an unselfconscious gesture of concern.

Seto pressed back into the corner. _Don't look at me!_

Mokuba's head popped up over the seat. "Is it hurting worse?"

"Put your seat belt back on, Mokuba!" he forced out through gritted teeth.

"Is _what_ hurting?" Yugi asked suddenly, his pale worried face craning around the other side of the seat back.

With a roar in his ears, Seto heard Mokuba cheerfully volunteer, "Oh, Pegasus's bad guys beat Seto up, and his butt hurts from sitting on the cell floor."

"His b- " Mai started to repeat, and without thinking he shot her a look. Her mouth became a small _o_ , and her eyes went wide, looking at him as though he were a three-headed freak.

What had he done? Now she knew. _She knew_. Even in the dim red shadows he could tell she had grasped what the others were too innocent to put together. An icy sweat swept over his body. He wanted to scream. He wanted to vomit. He wanted to claw his way out of the chopper.

"Cell floor, ha!" Mai said suddenly, looking away from him. " _I_ got bruises from those _lumpy_ _beds_! And that hand soap – looked to me like he was recycling samples stolen from every tacky motel his staff ever stayed at. The man just _didn't_ know how to treat guests, that's for sure. I mean, eyeballs in our soup, mind-reading, those spooky dimensions you were dragged to, locking people in dungeons – really, what century did he think we're in? Well, at least we know we'll never run into anyone _that_ evil again."

 _Why?_ he thought. _Why is she changing the subject? It's like she's deliberately drawing attention away from me. Why would she do that?_ He bowed his head, confusion and shame and nausea competing with the continued throbbing in his lap. _I shouldn't have pulled that catheter out so fast._

A light touch on his left knee. He looked up. Mokuba's face was squeezed between seat back and window, his arm stretched out to his brother. "Are you gonna be OK?" he mouthed.

And for the second time that evening Seto lied to him, and nodded.

.

The rest of the ride was long but uneventful. The blond switched position, his back now against the right wall, his legs on either side of Mai's, and dozed. There was much less talking; they were sleepy, the stress of the last few days finally collecting a toll in exhaustion.

Seto would not allow himself to relax, even as the pain ebbed away with his tumescence. He made a mental list of what he needed to do before he could allow himself to sleep that night: go through the post, his e-mail, the fax basket, the telex, skim the financials, listen to voice messages. Get ready for his talk tomorrow with those five bastards who'd sold out to Pegasus. ... And shower, even though he knew it was a cliché, even though it wouldn't be enough to feel clean. Would never be enough. He needed to molt, peel off his skin, slice it away, burn away the filth that covered him, grow shiny new skin, untouched by –

They were landing.

"Can our drivers take them home?" Mokuba was asking.

"No. They're all off duty."

This was a lie, of course: there was _always_ at least one on duty, in case he returned unexpectedly: but what was one more lie? His whole life would be a lie now, a mask hiding the true Kaiba. A phrase from long ago came to him: _whited sepulcher_. He could feel the maggots already, pressing against his tongue and chest. He needed to get away from everyone before he disintegrated.

"Don't let us inconvenience you, Mister Moneybags. We'll all pile in a cab," said the blond. "I think there's a pay phone I can call from, about a mile down the road. I can walk down there in no time."

Even Seto winced at that. "Don't be stupid." He handed his briefcase to Mokuba and nodded once; Mokuba took out a cell phone.

Kaiba turned his back to them and looked out over the dark valley below his mansion as the other chopper landed on the second pad..

"Pardon me, Kaiba? Could I ask you a favor?"

It was Mai.

_Blackmail? Already? She certainly doesn't waste time._

"I'd love to do some work for Kaiba Corp., and I wondered if you could give me a recommendation. I figure a word from you would go a long way to helping me get my foot in the door. Maybe you could write a note on one of your business cards?" She had a pen in hand.

"Huh?" _She was blackmailing him into helping her get a_ job _?_

"What do you say?" she asked, and, her back to Yugi and the others (who were gathered around Mokuba arranging for cabs) held out her pen to him with a dramatic gesture.

He was so surprised he reached in his jacket, pulled out a business card, and wrote on it _Give her a contract to do whatever she says she can handle._ He initialed it, and as she took her pen and his card from him she deftly slid a small paper into his palm.

"Call me." She whispered before turning around and striding away. "Alright Jounouchi, they better not be dropping anyone but ME off at my apartment!"

He turned his back to them again, and glanced at the paper. A telephone number, and the words _I know what you're going through._

 _Oh really?_ he thought. _How_ can _you? How can anyone?_

.

_~ To be continued ~_

.

.

.

  
Most of those that have been reading and saving my stories (and this story in particular) to their hard drives since 2002 know that I am addicted to revision – because rather than see fanfic as sculpture, I tend to see it more as ... a garden. Constantly weeded, changing sometimes from week to week. (grins)

Anyhow .. this story started out – and has remained – a Kaiba character study / "abuse recovery" story with JouKai elements. As I've picked the work up after the six-year hiatus, re-working chapter 6, and drafting the other stories in this "series" (especially Beholden) I've felt the need to make some adjustments. ~ Generally I don't note them, but this time is different. In place of the flashback of seeing the hentai tentacle manga, Kaiba now alludes to a different memory from his childhood (it'll be explained in Chapter 2). This change reflects my shifting emphasis on including more of this AU's Gozaburo and Pegasus in the story of Seto Kaiba.

(117) 7 May 2010, new flashback


	2. Helicopter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> This fiction, the sequel KP Duty, strives to follow canon characterizations and events as presented in the unedited anime. However, because two key characters (Pegasus and Gozaburo) have been purposefully distorted, these stories are unquestionably AU.

.

  
_(Takes place after Legendary Heroes arc)_   


.

  


_.  
_

.

For the ninth night in a row he woke to find himself frotting the mattress. Or rather the Beast was: he just happened to be attached.

"Not again," he muttered as he rolled onto his back and threw back the covers. Since they got back he'd been sleeping in one of the mansion's guest suites, to be as far from his regular room (and Mokuba) as he could. Which was good, as ...

__  
**need to rub need to push**   


… almost every night now his deep dreamless sleep had been interrupted by this nuisance. (He wondered if it had happened during the night he'd been trapped in the VR pod in the basement of Kaiba Corp during the unsuccessful coup: he'd check the bio-sensor logs.)

_Hmmm. you must be dreaming about what Pegasus did to you. Must have liked it, Kaiba-boy, if you're reliving those delicious, breathy moments every night. Why else would you be sleeping in this room, of all the beds in the mansion?_

The voice of Witty Phantom. Stuck in his head ever since he'd returned from the VR world, providing unwanted commentary that he seemed unable to shut out. He rolled out of bed. Dammit, he was Seto Kaiba. He was not going to have his life ruined by dreams and phantoms.

 _Ooo, I'm trembling! Such a fierce boy. So forceful and determined. Out of character for such a delicate_ uke- _flower._

So what if he was sleeping in the guest suite? It didn't mean anything. This room was just convenient, it wasn't the cause of the dreams. The dreams had started after Duelist Kingdom, so the best way to clear up this nonsense was to get the full story about what had happened there. Getting facts was the best way to diffuse the power of the unknown.

Not that what must have happened there was entirely unknown – Gozaburo had seen to that.

_._

_Furious that Seto had been corresponding with Pegasus –_  
who the Kaibas had met when the young entrepreneur  
was raising venture capital for the company he was founding –  
Gozaburo had dragged eleven-year-old Seto to the sitting room  
of the guest suite in the mansion's secluded observatory,  
sat him at a table that had a small television and a VCR,  
and handed him a tape. "He's a pedophile,"  
Gozaburo had spat. "This is what he'll do to you."  
He had then stood behind the television to watch Seto's face  
to make sure that he did not look away from the screen.  
The boy on the tape cried.  
The men on the tape wore masks. 

_The shaking, wide-eyed Seto had whispered at one point,  
"Mr Crawford is my friend, sir. He wouldn't ever do these things."_

_"He's simpering, degenerate filth," Gozaburo had snarled in reply._  
"I will not _have my investment in you ruined by his perversion."_  
Every day for a week he had made Seto watch the tape,  
hitting him with a riding crop if he looked away even for an instant.

_._

He stalked out of the bedroom into the suite's small sitting room, picked up the phone on the desk and dialed, straightening the desk's blotter, pencil cup, and letter opener as he waited for the other to answer.

"Mr. Kurosuke?"

A pause.

"Yes, I know. I'll be brief. I need to know exactly what he did to me."

Another pause.

"I didn't see the point of going to a doctor," _(none I can trust to keep this story secret)_ "since I haven't had any of the problems you listed. No fever, no back pain. Some bleeding when I first got home."

He listened.

"Yes, I'm sure."

The voice began, and the words trickled into his ear like poison.

"Are you _sure_? I don't – my memory of it seems incomplete."

His hand shaking, he spun the letter opener on the desk."And you're saying Pegasus didn't – ?" he swallowed hard, momentarily unable to speak.

He watched the flashing silver blade. From his perspective it appeared to slice through the Beast, again and again.

"But I remember," he forced the words out, " _some_ things. With him."

He listened, his throat tight again.

"I see. What evidence?"

A pause.

" _How_ many?"

He took a deep breath, battling vertigo. The letter opener slowed, his fingers above it frozen in mid-air.

"Contempt? As if all the other wasn't enough?"

.

He hung up the phone slowly. The rational part of his mind scrambled for control. "No." Kurosuke _had_ to be mistaken. Seto didn't remember anything to corroborate what he'd just heard. Sure, his fading bruises were evidence for at least one other person being there, as punching and kicking weren't Pegasus' style. But the other – he would have remembered _that_. Certainly, he would have remembered something like that. Wouldn't he? He shuddered, and then began to giggle hysterically from overload.

 _Funny Kaiba-boy,_ Phantom said, _You sound just like Dark Rabbit, did'ja know? You remember Dark Rabbit, don't you? Well, rabbits, they_ do _love carrots._

After a few minutes the paroxysm passed. He gripped the back of the chair, his stomach cramping. According to Kurosuke, Pegasus had been a witness. Instigating, but not participating. He didn't see how could that be true: it was so clear, his old friend's face bending over him, kissing him, stroking him ...

__  
**remember yes**   


... he was supposed to reject the little that he remembered, and accept things he had no memory of?

 _Tsk, tsk,_ _How disappointing for you._ _All this time you imagined_ – _ahhh, you imagined he came down to the kitchen alone that night and made a hot little love souffle with you there among the pots and pans and dishtowels! Didn't you? A private, romantic tête-à-tête. Caresses and sweet nothings. Do your fantasies have him gallantly spreading his red jacket on the cold floor, so you won't feel chilled while he takes you? Is that the dream that's been bringing the circus to your jammies every night?_

Shut up.

 _Kurosuke seems to have cleaned up after many of these parties. Whatever he says happened, happened. Such an_ intimate _moment it must have been! Pegasus sipping fine wine while five of his guests put on gloves and reamed you with whatever was handy. They didn't consider you worth the effort of unzipping their pants – except to piss on you when they were done_ –

Shut up!

_Such a shame. No one liked you enough to kiss you, not even your one-eyed idol. You must have made that part up, trying to comfort yourself with wishful thinking. Such a shame, Poor, deluded, unloved Kaiba-thing._

SHUT UP!

He stalked into the bathroom, stepped into the shower stall and barked "Cold!"

The voice-activated shower obeyed and he gasped as six jets of needle spray hit him. Instant goosebumps. The Beast beaded with moonstones and diamonds.

What was wrong with him? Was he losing control of his mind as well as of his body? He shivered.

"Colder! More pressure!"

The water became so cold it numbed his skin. At least the Beast was settling down. He wrapped his arms around himself, and leaned into the corner. Water ran from his hair down his neck and chest, icy serpents. Disgusting. Stupid! He howled; dry, wretched, animal sobs.

 _That's what is is, isn't it? Isn't that the real reason you're boo-hooing? Because fantasy has been replaced with truth?_ the insinuating voice kept at him. _C'mon, admit it – you thought you were special to Pegasus. The affectionate father-big brother-friend, brilliant inventor of the game you love so well, paying such attention to you – it give you a thrill. When he designed those cards just for you, you thought you had his heart, his love, isn't that right?_

NO!

He put his hands over his face.

_yes._

With this admission a whirlwind of self-loathing engulfed him. How easily he had been taken in, flattered at the way Pegasus treated him, guiltily experiencing every silky "Kaiba-boy" as a caress.

 _You deserved what you got in that kitchen. You_ wanted _it._

But he had obviously misinterpreted Pegasus' actions as indicating true feelings.

_The first person that comes along, you see nothing but happy ever after._

The thoughts he had sometimes about being with someone _,_ some day – that was normal, wasn't it? He was human, after all. Yes, he had made a mistake about Pegasus: he would not make that mistake again.

 _Hasn't it sunk in yet, Kaiba-boy? No one wanted a mess like you_ before, _and now – well, why would anyone settle for damaged goods?_

"Shut up!" He pounded his fist on the wall. No one would ever want to be with him? Fine. Most people were unreliable anyhow, full of random noise. He would better off without them ...

And then, just like that, the idea exploded into being.

The VR software. Modify it to create a lover of virtual flesh. Such an obvious idea, why hadn't he thought of it sooner? It would have made the trip home from Duelist Kingdom _constructive_ , if he had absorbed it as data, been a detached observer: the precise way their clothes stretched across their bodies when they moved, how their hair flowed and changed color in the light, the smells of perfume and sweat. If he had been objective he wouldn't have been humiliated by being used as furniture by Jounouchi, and it wouldn't have given him an erection.

It was still a strong memory, the feel of that warm, muscled back against his leg.

He groaned as a sudden wave of desire rolled out from deep in his pelvis, pushing aside speculation and reason. Every inch of skin suddenly ached to touch someone, anyone. "Hot," he whispered. Eyes still closed, he pressed the heel of his hand against his mouth, imagining it was a shoulder, a thigh: he bit the flesh softly, licked it, kissed it gently and then harder, imagining his caresses drawing out soft moans from someone who welcomed his company. _His_ mind. _His_ rules. He would be in control. He would see what he wanted to see, feel what he wanted to feel.

Turning from the corner, eyes still closed, he leaned back against the warm wet wall. Under the now steaming spray he rubbed his other palm over his chest and down his belly. He took his hand from his mouth and ran his dripping fingers over his lips, then slid them in over his tongue, sucking hungrily, pretending his other hand was someone exploring him, surrounding him ...

The Beast approved, and was rewarded.

_._

_~ to be continued ~_

_._

_._

_._

__Author's note: In 2003 I collaborated with the author Elf on Summoning Death, a crossover side story which "takes place" between chapters 2 and 3 of Coming Clean. In Summoning Death Duo Maxwell (Gundam Wing) makes an extended visit to the Kaiba household and befriends Seto and Mokuba. The 2003 version of Summoning Death (archived at FanFiction. net and Mediaminer) meshed very well with Coming Clean at the time it was written. However, since 2003 the characterizations and some details of the two stories have diverged enough that they no longer work as a seamlessly-integrated narrative.

It's still a darn entertaining story, though, so don't hesitate to go off and read it. :)

(120) 15 August 2010 ~ edit flashback


	3. Bookstore

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> Don't let the OC scare you; she's plot, not love interest, and appears only in this chapter. :p

 

_(Takes place during the Dungeon Dice Monsters arc)_

* * *

.

He didn't want to open his eyes, but Mokuba had other ideas.

"C'mon! You have to get up _now_ or I'll be late!"

He pulled the pillow over his face. An instant later it was yanked out of his hands, and then smacked him in the head.

_Whunk!_

"Just because – "

_Whunk!_

" – you're excused from school – "

_Whunk!_

" – doesn't mean you can sleep all day!"

"All right!" He grabbed the pillow as it came down again and opened his eyes.

Mokuba was staring at him.

"What is it?"

Mokuba jumped on the bed and threw his arms around Seto's neck, squeezing with all his might. "No matter _what_ I'll always love you. And I'll always be your number one, too, right?"

"Right."

.

The house was too quiet after Mokuba left.

He didn't feel like getting dressed, so he took coffee to his upstairs office and forced himself to read KaibaCorp e-mail, but for the first time since – well, since he could remember – the business graphs and spreadsheets did not hold his interest. After an hour he finally admitted defeat, piled the various printouts to one side, and reached to shut the computer down.

Then he noticed that his search-engine spider had spun a tiny web in the lower left corner of the screen, holding up the words "Mutou Yugi" and beneath it "5,481 results."

He clicked and sat forward eagerly. Yugi's name was always mentioned on gaming boards at least 100 times a day since Duelist Kingdom, but this was an explosion: something unusual must have happened. He quickly saw what: a Domino game shop, the Black Clown, was televising a duel between Yugi and someone named Otogi Ryuji. Not Duel Monsters, something called Dungeon Dice Monsters, he saw as he skimmed the search results. He turned on the TV and finally found the channel carrying the broadcast.

"That's a good point, Tsuda," the older of two commentators was saying, "And isn't it true that Mutou Yugi has agreed to surrender his Duelist Kingdom title to Otogi and never play Duel Monsters competitively again if he loses here?"

"Yes, Kenjirou, that's exactly correct," the younger, demographically current sportscaster replied. "Although most legal experts polled said that there is no way that Otogi Ryuuji can enforce such a nebulous verbal agreement."

A sinking feeling in Kaiba's stomach. He knew Otogi wouldn't have to enforce it, because Yugi would keep his word. _If Yugi never plays again, how can I defeat him and regain my title?_

The commentators switched to a background piece comparing Duel Monsters and Dungeon Dice Monsters, and Kaiba muted the television.

He scanned board postings. A few discussed whether or not Otogi could – or would – enforce the ban, and most of the rest were people boasting of their own DDM prowess. However, he noticed a posting by detroitkat – usually a source of reliable and useful information – so he opened it.

Under the topic "How the Hell did this get started?" detroitkat had written, "`/uu9| g07 |n2 7h|5 m47ch b3c4u53 h3 w45 d3f3nd|n9 7h3 h0n0r 0f 4 fr|3nd wh0 l057 4 du31 w|7h 0t09| (d|c3b0y) & wh0's b3|n9 HUM|1|473D b`/ h4\/|n9 2 w34r a d09 5u|7. |f u d0n'7 b31|3v3 m3 ch3ck P0rk3r's c4m (www. Ihateplatypusears. com/~dogcam)"

He looked up at the TV. In the background, in the midst of the inane cheerleaders, he could see a large lumpy beige furball.

 _It couldn't be._ He clicked on the dogcam link.

It was. He shook his head in exasperation. How did the idiot get himself in these situations? As he watched the crowd's mood rise and fall with each successive move the players made, he found himself suddenly furious at this Otogi. How _dare_ he force someone to wear such a costume?

He moused over the close box for the dogcam, but couldn't bring himself to dismiss the jumpy, grainy, ridiculous spectacle.

After a few more seconds of indecision, he set the browser to save the streaming dogcam broadcast to the server's hard drive. Then he sat back and watched the rest of the duel: Otogi destroyed one of Yugi's monsters and something went out of his eyes. Suddenly Jounouchi was yelling something, after a minute both the broadcast and the dogcam carried it. "... You're not fighting for my freedom! You're fighting in the name of everyone who ever fought against you with all their might – even Pegasus. Is the champion of Duelist Kingdom now a quitter? _No_! So what if this game is different? You can't give up!"

Seto snorted.

"You're right, Jounouchi-kun," Yugi said ( _how ludicrous, Yugi playing in defense of Jounouchi's honor_ – _such as it was_ ). "Thank you for reminding me. A game is a game. I will focus all my energy on the dice, and I won't give up until the last second."

 _What, "Heart of the Dice" now?_ Whatever. It didn't protect his last monster.

"Gamers all over the world are watching this on the net, Yugi-kun. Why don't you just admit defeat?" What a smug, posturing asshole this Otogi was. Seto wondered who had financed the arena and the licensing of the KaibaCorp holotechnology; but considering the game design and Otogi himself, this derivative game had Pegasus's cologned fingerprints all over.

And then of course, Dark somehow brought out Dark Magician, and did his usual tricks with the damned Hats and the Magic Box. Well, at least he silenced the peacock. "Heart points. How ridiculous."

It was good that Yugi wasn't giving up dueling. What had he been thinking, to risk so much just to save that pathetic blond loser?

.

 _"Kaiba!" Jounouchi roared as he grabbed his jacket,_  
"Maybe you have good reasons for going after Pegasus,  
but I won't let you do this! We are all here to compete  
for the honor of defeating him!"

 _He looked down at Jounouchi's flushed, furious face_  
for a moment, then grasped his wrist and thrown him aside.  
"If you are a top Duelist Kingdom competitor,  
then the level of duelist has really fallen."

.

Jounouchi was – unfocused, impulsive, sloppy, and completely incapable of the type of subtle strategy that distinguished the very best players. The best that could be said of him was that he was persistent – to the point of stupidity and beyond. He never backed down, played until every last life point was crushed from him. It might be somewhat admirable, if it wasn't so idiotic.

Seto frowned. Annoying – now he had the image in his head of that face, inches from his own, flushed, lips open, panting ...

Ridiculous. He got up from the desk and went to his room. From a shelf in his closet he took one of a dozen identical, neatly folded green shirts. Next to them hang six pairs of matching green pants, and three blue dusters. Wearing the same thing every day simplified getting dressed. One less decision to be made.

He studied himself in the mirror as he buttoned the shirt. As he reached for his pants he noticed that the second shirt-button from the top was an odd color, and didn't match the shirt. He stepped up to the mirror and looked closer: in fact, _four_ of the buttons were mismatched, all slightly different shades of green. And all four were sewn to the shirt not with dark green thread, but black.

Puzzled, he unbuttoned the shirt and examined it. The fabric beneath the mismatched buttons looked as though it had been torn – and then been mended by hand – with small strips of fabric trimmed from the shirttails.

Then it hit him. _This was the shirt he had worn at Duelist Kingdom_. The one he'd been wearing when –

_._

_Pegasus had ripped the shirt open, murmuring,_  
"Oh, I've been wanting to do something like this for simply  
ages _." The flying buttons made tiny pinging sounds  
as they hit the metal counters and the floor._

_._

He pulled the shirt off in disgust, in the process turning the shirt inside out. Now he could see several places where tears to the shoulders and sleeves had been repaired, probably by Kurosuke.

He dropped the shirt to the floor and began looking through his green pants, one by one, until finally he found the pair he knew would be there. The original side seams were intact, but parallel to each a new seam ran crookedly up each leg, all the way through the frayed waistband, where they had sliced away his clothing with knives.

He folded the repaired pants and shirt together, then knelt and opened the bottom drawer of his dresser. The one he rarely opened, the one with the things he could not bear to touch, even to throw away: his swim trunks, the beach towel, the autographed rule books and programs, the drawings, the locked ebony box, the torc and ring wrapped in tissue. Every single thing in here was connected to Pegasus, represented something he had given – or taken. With the addition of the green pants and shirt the drawer was full.

"Bastard," Kaiba said softly, with absolute hatred. His hands were shaking.

He closed the drawer, then gathered the remaining green shirts and pants and put them in the trash. All that was left in his closet was a black suit. He pulled on the pants, then took a white undershirt from the shelf.

As he ran his fingers through his mussed hair he caught sight of his forearm, usually hidden by long sleeves. Six parallel, half-healed cuts, starting just above the wrist. The shallower cuts were shiny pink wavers; the other, deeper ones were still puckered and partly scabbed.

_._

_"Smash the plate."_

_He'd obediently slammed it against the inside of the empty  
right-hand sink. A curved shard remained in his hand._

_"Now," said Pegasus, drawing out the word like a caress,  
"Cut yourself on the arm with the plate." _

_._

With a sigh he took the suit jacket from the hanger.

.

As the computer in his basement office cycled through its startup sequence he noticed the letters at the bottom of the main plasma screen: _MLE_.

"Define new voice input prompt delimiter."

"Value?"

"Millie."

"Accepted."

It didn't seem at all odd to be give the computer a name: after all, he _had_ programmed it as a self-expanding neural net, theoretically conscious of itself and capable of developing a personality. And it – _she_ – knew even more of his secrets than Mokuba.

"Open Tantalus directory," he said, then sat with his face in his hands. The program – Tantalus (the word had popped into his head when he'd been prompted to name the directory) – could be far more than a mere "sex program" if he gave the interactions some sort of context, an interesting narrative frame. He was sure it would be a viable product – if he just knew where to start.

"You look perplexed."

Startled, he looked up. "What?"

"I have been taking advantage of idle cycles to develop an emotion parsing system based on analysis of facial muscles and skeletal posture. The sum of your 'expression' and your 'body language' components indicate high levels of the emotional states called 'preoccupation' and 'dejection.' "

Interesting. "I need to expand the range of interpersonal interactions in the Tantalus program, but I am not sure which direction to take."

"Are these interactions professional, familial, or sexual?"

He raised an eyebrow. "Sexual."

"Procreative sex, commodity sex, or romantic sex?"

"Romantic." He half-laughed. Was he going to be the first person to have to give his computer a co-designer credit?

"I suggest beginning with the class of interaction designated _flirting._ Would you like information presented from the perspective of the initiator or the recipient?"

He scowled. "Qualify and tabulate differences."

"Analyzing." A miniscule delay, then she said, "Initial state is trivial, as flirtatious behavior is a self-sustaining reciprocity once the mode is initiated."

As he read the summary, he shook his head. " 'Conversational gambits. Eye contact. Increasing physical proximity. Brief, non-threatening, non-genital contact. Expressed empathy. Ambiguous communication arising from use of language with multiple denotations and/or connotations.' It's this formulaic?"

"Chess moves are easily described, too, but the totality and sequencing make it complex and enjoyable."

"Flirting doesn't deserve to be compared to chess."

"Noted. I will refrain from future comparisons."

"There's evidence that this technique is effective?"

"I have identified 8,419,251 references. Should I output to voice or screen?"

"Neither," he said, conceding defeat. "Any other resources?"

"I have assembled an interactive program for practice drills. Would you prefer to hone your charm on a male or a female subject?"

"Very funny."

"I have also utilized my idle cycles to analyze a wide range of recordings of human behavior. I have determined that what is called 'a sense of humor' is an appealing and enjoyable character trait in an intelligent entity."

Despite himself, he smiled at the evidence of the AI program's success. "Hn, I see you've also learned sarcasm as well."

"I've had trillions of cycles worth of input observing _you_."

He started making notes. "Open the Tantalus directory. And tell the limo pool I'll be going out in 30 minutes."

.

It was the phase of a project that he enjoyed the most, the "research and inspiration" phase.

For all that he was surrounded by cutting-edge electronic gadgets – many of them of his own invention – he savored what most people would call "low tech" as well. For the day-to-day running of the company he needed the instant information and analysis that his computer network gave him, but for brainstorming and planning he needed not sterile odorless untouchable images on a screen, but _tangible_ objects, the older the better, that stimulated all his senses. Once he had the general idea for a project he shut himself in his office with an array of antique fountain pens, vellum, parchment, Bristol board, and poured over old books and audio recordings: somehow their very imperfections amplified his creativity and made his thought processes sublime.

The particular second-hand bookstore that he went to had been unchanged for years, an old narrow building tucked into a cul de sac that had escaped Domino's downtown gentrification. Flanked by an antique store and an Asian apothecary, it seemed like a magical pocket out of time.

An old woman behind the counter looked up as he entered and asked if he needed help.

"No, I'm browsing." He started to walk into the stacks, then turned and asked, "A dictionary?" Might as well look up Tantalus.

She pointed.

 _ **Tan-ta-lus,**_ _[L fr. Gr Tantalos], a legendary king of Lydia condemned to stand up to the chin in a pool of water in Hades and beneath fruit-laden boughs only to have the water or fruit recede at each attempt to drink or eat._

_Source of the word "tantalize," to tease or torment by presenting something desirable but continually out of reach._

He shook his head ruefully. _Not when I'm the one defining the reach, it won't._ He replaced the book, and continued to scan the shelves, turning corners, deeper and deeper into the maze. Novels, encyclopedias of comparative religion and mythology. Fairy tales, demonology ... nothing. He was just about to go when he saw "It".

_._

_He had been eleven. Gozaburo had pointed him to the chess books,_  
said "See if there's anything worthwhile in this shit heap,"  
and left for a meeting. Seto had found, to his delight,  
a volume with a worn and wordless spine that seemed to be  
the 1770 edition of Philidor's Legacy of Chess _. He sat  
patiently in a corner. Father would be proud of him this time._

 _But it had been a long wait, and after an hour or so he_  
got up and wandered among the twisty warren of rooms,  
cradling the Philidor. Nothing caught his eye until, in a tiny  
alcove, a book with a blue leather cover, just at his eye level,  
drew him like a beacon. Ornate silver lettering on the spine  
proclaimed grandly Dragons of All Cultures _. He had pulled the_  
book out with a trembling hand. Hand tooled in amazing  
relief on the cover was a dragon rampant. He had been  
forbidden to waste his time on such books, but surely just  
a quick browse wouldn't hurt? He'd have plenty of time to  
put it back, the heavy smell of cigar smoke would alert him.  
He sat down on the floor, the Philidor in his lap, opened the  
heavy leather cover, and was instantly entranced.  
Delicate watercolor plates of fantastic beasts,  
each one protected by the filmiest of vellum.  
Stories of knights, maidens, warriors, goddesses,  
of sorcerers who could transform themselves  
into dragons, of the many-headed Hydra – 

_Suddenly the book was gone and he was choking, being_  
dragged by his shirt collar from the small room, his legs  
and shoulders banging on edges of bookcases. Gozaburo,  
the dragon book in hand, ignored the chess book Seto kept  
trying to hand to him until they reached the front counter.  
Here he paused, scanned the Philidor, grunted  
noncommittally, then threw a wad of bills on the counter.  
Seto took advantage of the pause to stand.  
Gozaburo grabbed his upper arm in a painfully strong grip  
(the bruises had been visible for weeks)  
and marched him to the car.

 _"How many times have I told you, fantasy doesn't make_  
any money," he had said coldly. "Let's see if I can finally  
burn that into your brain." Gozaburo had destroyed the  
dragon book in front of him that night, a page at a time,  
puffing his cigars, punctuating the lesson with pain.  
By the time he put the gutted boards on the brazier  
he was so enraged that he had ground his cigar out on  
Seto's back, then left him in the dark.

 _Seto had been good, he hadn't made a sound, not even a_  
whimper, and fortunately his position had allowed his  
tears to drip directly onto the floor instead of leaving  
tell-tale trails on his face. He had fixed his attention on  
the flickering coals and soft crackle of the cooling ashes,  
and kept imagining that he saw the outline of the dragon  
in the glowing embers.

 _At dawn he was allowed to dress himself and crawl to his_  
bed. It was the first time he had ever whispered aloud,  
"I hate you." As he said it he felt vast wings spread inside him.

.

He pulled the blue-gray volume out. Of course it was not the same book, but it did have dragons along with the castles and knights. As he flipped through it he muttered, "Fantasy doesn't make money?" Tantalus, which he was sure would be of interest to more than duelists, had the potential to make more money than all the other KaibaCorp products combined. And no one would die, or kill anyone, using it. Too bad Gozaburo wasn't around to receive a few lessons of his own.

He stopped on a page with a particularly magnificent engraving of a dragon that looked a bit like the Blue Eyes and stared at it, lost in thought.

A whisper at his elbow startled him. "Excuse me?"

He looked. A young woman stood next to him, pointing to the top shelf of a bookcase.

"If you would, please reach and bring down for me the book with the star symbol?"

Holding the dragon book in his right hand, he reached up with his left. As he did so his coat sleeve slid back, revealing the six puckered scars on his arm.

"Interesting tattoo," she said as he handed her the book.

He shrugged the sleeve down. "Not a tattoo," he murmured, reopening the fairy tale book.

She stood next to him in silence, skimming through the volume he had brought down for her. He glanced over and saw strange letters, a language he didn't know.

They stood there, paging through their respective books for a few minutes.

She asked very softly, "Knights and damsels in distress?"

"Software development research," he said simply, and took a more careful look at her. College age, most likely. Long red hair pinned up in messy loops. Pale skin. A black tunic over wildly-patterned leggings.

"But I also," he said suddenly, "like dragons." His voice sounded loud in the hush of the bookstore.

"Oh?" She smiled at him. "You are a programmer?"

She didn't know who he was? The conversation might be a welcome change from the usual ass-kissers. "Yes."

"That's difficult, going to school and working as well. Are you helping to support your family?"

"Yes." Well, it was true. "My brother."

"You two must be very close."

"We are."

Another silence. He rifled quickly through the rest of the book. An engraving of dragon in an Egyptian context caught his eye as it flew past, and he started to page back to find it.

She startled him by saying. "Please excuse my rudeness, but those marks on your arm are very unusual." She hesitated, then asked, "Would you mind if I saw them again?"

It was her eyes that decided him. They weren't prurient, or disgusted, or prying, but just – _calm_. He set the dragon book aside, then held his arm out towards her.

She cupped the back of his hand in one her palm, and with the other hand pushed his sleeve back. "An accidental injury, or self inflicted?" she asked.

"Both," he said, tensing. Why was he letting a stranger touch him?

She looked at him steadily. It was very odd; other than Mokuba, he rarely had the opportunity to look into another person's eyes, and when he did it was rarely under pleasant circumstances.

"An initiation?"

"No. What do you find so unusual?"

"Have you ever heard of the _Yijing_? It is an ancient system, over 3,000 years old, of interpreting patterns of six lines, each line with two states. There are sixty-four possible combinations, called hexagrams. Every hexagram has a special meaning."

 _Divination and fortunetelling_ he thought with disgust, but kept his mouth shut and his face impassive. Her hands were pleasantly warm.

"Some people make a mundane use of it, like the horoscope in the paper. But I prefer to think of the hexagrams as puzzles to be studied for a higher purpose. Tools for self-examination. Perhaps they're like a computer test script?" she ventured.

"Interesting concept," he said curtly. _What garbage,_ he thought. _A test script is precise, designed to accomplish a specific task. It yields useful results._

Seemingly aware of his resistance, she moved on. "Six cuts on your arm. Six lines in a hexagram. Each line is either yin or yang. A broken line is considered yin." She put her finger on a scar that had a space in the middle, where the shard of plate had snagged on his skin as he'd cut himself, "and an unbroken line is yang." She put her finger on the unbroken line closest to his wrist. "This cut, was it made first or last?"

"I don't know."

She looked up at him again, and this time a fleeting bewilderment and concern flickered across her face. He steeled himself for an expression of pity, but all she said was, "Well, then we must consider both possibilities. Each hexagram is drawn from the bottom up. So when I stand facing you," she lifted his hand, still cupped in her own, "the line at your wrist is the first to me because it is at the bottom, and the line closest to your elbow is the top line, the sixth. And what this pattern is," she brushed her finger up his arm, leaving his skin tingling, "is Hexagram 17."

Mystical Nonsense Girl quickly surveyed the shelves, then had a conversation in a dialect he didn't recognize with the old woman at the front of the store. When it was over she nodded, then reached to pull out a small, thick book. She flipped to a page and held the book out to him.

The top of the page said "17: _Sui_ / Following" and beneath it was a picture of a stack of six lines, some with a gap in the middle. She turned the book around so that it faced her, and held the diagram next to his arm. The picture in the book matched the pattern of cuts on his arm.

"And this means what?"

"Well, _Sui_ means go along, to follow, come after, easygoing, go with the pre-destined flow."

He snorted softly, "I'm not a follower."

"Oh, this following does not necessarily mean other people. It also means to follow an ideal, let yourself be guided by it. It also represents the goal of living in the moment and balancing the opposite energies in your life."

"Such as?"

"Activity and rest, strength and flexibility, companionship and solitude."

As expected – ambiguous enough to apply to everyone, and therefore useless.

"Also, you must," she read from the book in her hand: " ' _adapt to the needs of the time. No situation can become favorable until one is able to adapt to it and does not wear himself out with mistaken resistance.'_ " She sighed. "I wonder what to do about the changing lines," she murmured.

"Changing lines?"

"The _Yijing_ is centered around the concept of constant energy flow, so the patterns are always changing. Old yang turns into yin, old yin into yang. The initial hexagram shows the current or soon to be current situation: then, the changing lines are applied to transform it into a new hexagram showing the outcome. For you – perhaps since these four cuts" – she indicated the one nearest his wrist, and the top three – "have healed more than the others we can say they've changed more and let them be the changing lines." She frowned.

"What?" And more nonsense. Complexity masquerading as profundity. Pseudo-science for the gullible.

"Changing these lines makes Hexagram 23, _Po_. It indicates disruption and splitting apart."

"Oh?"

"You will fall under the pressure of your adversaries." She seemed to be reciting from memory. "In order to triumph, you must be outwardly firm and inwardly submissive."

"Submissive?" Adversaries? Yugi? or another attack from within KaibaCorp?

"At least you have the outward firmness." She didn't look up, but he could see her smile. She tucked the book under her arm and touched the scars one by one as she recited again. "Initially you will be defeated, because your foundations will be undermined. But as a rotten fruit reveals its seed, your defeat is the prelude to a new beginning. Inwardly you will develop true generosity of heart and spirit – the qualities of Earth which nourish and sustain all things."

"Who are these adversaries who will defeat me?" Would Yugi defeat him again? _No, stop filling in the blanks of what she's saying,_ he told himself, _that's exactly how people get sucked into believing this._

"Well, adversaries can mean people, or they can mean negative emotions such as egotism, anger, lack of compassion or clarity of spirit."

Oh, now she was accusing him of egotism?

"So," she said quietly, "let's look at it the other way." She let go of his hand and came around to his left side, pulling the book from under her arm. As she stood next to him turning pages he detected a very faint spicy smell. Cloves?

"OK, from this direction this is what you have."

He looked down at the book she held out: Hexagram 18, _Ku /_ Error.

"This book translates _Ku_ as 'Error', but I also know it as 'Work on What has been Spoiled' or 'Restoring What has Deteriorated'. Some books even call it 'Repair'."

A chill ran through him at these words. "Spoiled?"

"Well, _ku_ is associated with everything sneaky, ill-meaning and evil. If you know Chinese, you can see that it has the radical that means 'worm'. The origin of the word comes from a legend. Many poisonous worms are put into one big jar to eat each other. The survivor is called the _ku_ and its body is made into a deadly poison that is put in people's food."

"Charming," he said dryly.

" _Ku_ indicates that your current situation is very painful, but when you apply changing lines the outcome can be very very good."

He stared at the page.

"Yes. Let me read you what it says for _Ku_ first." She read.

 _... indifference combined with rigid inertia ... the result is_  
stagnation. Since this implies guilt, the conditions embody a  
demand for the removal of the cause...What has been spoiled  
through man's fault can be made good again through man's work.  
It is not immutable fate, as in the time of STANDSTILL, that  
has caused the state of corruption, but rather the abuse of human  
freedom. We must know the causes of corruption before we can  
do away with them ... decisiveness and energy must take the  
place of the inertia and indifference that have led to decay,  
in order that the ending may be followed by a new beginning.

_Line 1 - compensate for the decay that the father allowed to  
creep in..._

Father.

"Most translate this hexagram to refer to anyone who was a mentor to you. Someone who perhaps betrayed your trust or used their power to take advantage of you."

He couldn't take his eyes from the book. The diagram in the book matched the marks on his arm. The description mentioned guilt, and corruption, and abuse of freedom, It felt unreal. Gozaburo. Pegasus. Father, father-figure. Hadn't what they'd done to him when he was under their power poisoned him? A chill ran over him, but she apparently didn't notice as she continued to read.

 _"Line 2: in order not to wound, one should not attempt_  
to proceed too drastically. Line 3: proceed a bit too  
energetically, and you may have some regret ..."

She waved her hand. "Well, all the rest just cautions to go slowly."

"And the outcome?"

"Yes, that's the wonderful part," she said enthusiastically as she turned pages, "it's one of my favorites, one of the happiest outcomes. Number 24, _Fu_. This book calls it 'Return' and others call it the 'Turning Point'. I always imagine it as the first shafts of sun coming down from the clouds after a frightening storm." She read again, and he followed the words:

 _"... the time of darkness is past. After the time of decay comes_  
the turning point. The powerful light that has been banished  
returns. There is movement, but it is not brought about by force.  
The upper trigram K'un is characterized by devotion; thus the  
movement is natural, arising spontaneously. For this reason the  
transformation of the old becomes easy ... The old is discarded  
and the new is introduced... everything must be treated tenderly  
and with care at the beginning, so that the return may lead to a  
flowering."

"A gradual transformation, beginning on the inside, that will eventually manifest on the outside. And see, all the lines but one are yin, but that bottom yang line is considered to attract others, which means that your peers and friends will come to join and support you."

"Peers?"

"Don't tell me you don't have peers?" Her hazel eyes twinkled. "You must be a true prince among programmers."

"And what I do with this – ?" He stopped himself before he added any other words.

"Well, combine the readings: following the path that the universe sets out for you will allow you to fix what is spoiled."

 _Conveniently vague,_ he thought. "Path? You mean like _fate_? I'm predestined to do certain things, and I should just lie down and accept that?"

"No, not at all. You always have the freedom to respond however you wish to everything placed in your path, every choice, every person. But you also must accept that you cannot control the entire universe. It is too large." She paused, then added, "Even for a programmer. Or," she continued, "perhaps _Sui_ is for your outward situation, what you show to the world, your public face, since that's the hexagram I see when I face you. Then _Ku_ is what you see, your inner self, the side that only you know about. So in your outer life you will be called to follow an ideal, which will allow your adversaries to temporarily overcome you. While inside you is some damage, some poison, and if you can understand how it is affecting you, and repair it slowly, you can have a rebirth to happiness." She smiled wryly. "It sounds to me like the universe is planning to put both a Great Task and a Great Love in your path."

"Don't tell me anyone takes this stuff seriously?"

"Hundreds of years ago, there was a strong connection between the _Yijing_ and the teachings of Confucius, which were such an important influence on _bushido_ , so – ." She turned and smiled up at him.

"So?" he prompted, a little more harshly than he meant to.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she said with a small dip of her head, "but the _Sui_ and _Po_ hexagrams usually point to someone who is a leader or warrior."

"I duel."

"I see. So of course you understand how you differ from a mere fighter."

He looked at her, waiting for more.

"Fighters have base motivations – anger, resentment revenge – and take joy in crushing weak opponents so that they may puff themselves up with a sense of power. They are always trying to force the world to acknowledge their supposed superiority, and their hunger is never sated. A warrior like you, on the other hand, has superior motives: you fight for principles, ideals, strive ever higher, test your progress only against stronger opponents, always seek to transition to a higher level in both your inner and outer life. And someday, when you have achieved full mastery, you will become calm in spirit, for you will have taken your own measure and will be at peace."

"The words 'warrior' and 'peace' don't seem to go together."

"There are many types of warriors. Some fight men. Some fight dark ideas. Some fight both. And some of the fiercest battles are fought in the soul, against one's self."

"Very poetic."

She looked at him steadily, then nodded. "I see. No poetry for the dragon-master."

She turned, scanned the shelves. "Something tells me you might enjoy this book." After a moment she pulled out and handed him a slim volume and said, "I enjoyed talking to you very much. Perhaps our paths will cross again."

"If the universe thinks it's a good idea," he said, hoping that it did not sound too sarcastic.

"Perhaps it will," she replied with a smile, and, after bowing slightly, she left him.

He opened to the book's title page. "The Ancient Arts of Bow and Blade."

He began to read.

.

Soon he lost track of time, emptying the shelves of book after book: archery, sword-fighting, military history, the floating world, spreading them around him on the floor as if he was at home. Setting Tantalus program in medieval Japan would be a masterstroke. People loved to escape to other times, with different mores. Both men and women of this period could be warriors. Hand-to-hand combat (both armed and unarmed), non-antagonistic sparring, and interpersonal/political intrigue all had scripting potential on their own, as well as for – capture and punishment scenarios.

And there was the visual richness of the era.

His watch chimed, and he realized with a start that he'd have to leave soon if he was going to be home when Mokuba arrived. He took all the books to the counter while calling his driver. "I'll take these."

"Would you like them delivered?"

"I'll take them with me."

As the old woman neatly stacked, wrapped, and tied his bundles of books, he picked up one of her business cards. _Enoki Hinako._

As he turned to go she said, "Don't forget your other package."

"What?"

"Miss Poole brought this to the counter and said I was to give it to you." She held out a small box tied with thread.

"Who?"

The old woman smiled. "The young lady. With the red hair."

"When was this?"

"A few hours ago."

He broke the thread and opened the box, then blinked in surprise. Inside was a small pale yellow object, about the size of a plum, one side carved with a dragon in high relief.

Hinako nodded appreciatively. "Ah, what a beautiful _netsuke!"_

"That reminds me – bring me anything you have on feudal period clothing."

"Certainly." She hurried from behind the counter.

As he waited he examined the _netsuke_. The worn ivory was warm and silky, and the dragon – though no Blue Eyes – was magnificent, carved in such high relief that it seemed ready to take flight at any moment. Deepset eyes, observant and self-possessed in the fringed lion-like head. A sinuous, looping body. Curved claws that seemed to say _It wouldn't be a good idea to piss me off._ It was clearly a dragon that didn't need to prove itself to anyone; its power was evident even at rest. As he turned it over to look at the back he noticed a very faint hairline running around the edge. He held it up to the light: it was somewhat translucent. Hollow? _Either that, or it's glowing with mystical energy_ , he thought ruefully. It seemed as though the dragon was guarding whatever was inside the netsuke, but the halves were joined with such complete perfection that he couldn't open it. Or – perhaps the artist meant the inside to remain hidden? Seto felt as much envy for the mind that had conceived such a puzzle as for the skill that had shaped the dragon itself.

The bookstore owner came back with a small volume on _netsuke_ , and a set of three oversize hand-tooled volumes on historical costume. He paged through them quickly; large, detailed color illustrations.. "Excellent. I'll take them all." As he paid for the additional books he asked, "Does Miss Poole come in often?"

"Yes, she comes every few months."

"Give her a message the next time you see her. Tell her – " What should he say? The _Yijing_ stuff had been nonsense, of course, but the book she had handed him had been just what he needed. _You_ _inspired me_ was too melodramatic. "Tell her I said thank you."

.

As soon as he had Mokuba settled with a snack and homework, he carried the books and the _netsuke_ downstairs.

As he looked through the costume books, he had a sudden thought.'"Millie, order some clothing for me based on visual similarity: keyword _kamishimo_. Give additional weight to keyword _kataginu_ ," he flipped a few more pages, "and _yukata_. And," he held the page under the built in 3-D scanner, "this picture, especially the armor."

"How much design deviation?"

He shrugged. "Up to 20%."

"Colors?"

"Solids, no prints."

"Anything else?"

"Hm, black pants, long sleeved turtlenecks."

"Going for the elegant, understated look, I see. Shall I add a smoking jacket?"

He shook his head. _An AI with personality._

He picked up the _netsuke_ thoughtfully. "I'm going describe an extended interaction to you. Parse the material and analyze to three decimal places." He added, "Make sure to include 'flirting' on the keyword list."

He then described as best he could what had happened between Miss Poole and himself in the bookstore: what was said, exactly how she took and held his hand, touched his arm, how close she stood to him.

Millie reported, "Probability that she was flirting: 68.759%. Probability that she was being friendly: 29.167%. Probability that she was being merely civil: 2.073%."

"That's only 99.999."

"I also added a one-one thousandth of a percent chance that she was sent by your enemies for some nefarious purpose."

_Definitely too much personality._

"Probability that she thought I was flirting with her?" Unbelievable, that he was posing such a question to his computer.

"82.883%."

He wasn't sure why, but he felt unreasonably pleased.

.

_~ to be continued ~_

_._

(121) 27 Dec 2010 ~ small cleanup on read-through


	4. Balcony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

.

.

He checked the security system readings twice: fence, outer doors, elevator, lab hallway door, workroom door, and the door to the room with the VR equipment. All six locks were engaged. Satisfied he wouldn't be ambushed, he stripped, pulled on the skin-tight biosensor suit, and stepped carefully into the VR pod.

"Alright Millie, load Tantalus version 17e," he said as he began to attach the leads from the Sensory Interface panel to the suit.

"Rendition?" Millie asked.

"What's available?"

"Humanoid characters are wireframe. 78% of the props have full rendering. Do you want breakdowns by category?"

"No. I'm primarily testing character interaction and sensory interface, but I can compensate." He fit the helmet over his head. "Start sequence." The pod cover came down, and he heard the soft hiss as it locked and switched to its dedicated power and life-support system. He closed his eyes and –

– when he opened them he was standing in a wood, on a narrow path paved with the golden-brown of last year's pine needles. It was early on a spring morning: the air was cool, the sun warm, and the tree branches were studded with leaf buds. He took a deep breath and started to walk, then pressed his thumbs together to activate the memo sub-channel: "Item: Olfactory input missing."

"Reload?" Millie asked.

"No. Check for compile errors. Or suit malfunction." It might be time to fire some of his technicians.

After a few moments, the path came to a large clearing around the base of an enormous tree. He ran his fingers over the tree's rough, deeply grooved bark. "Item: Tactile improved. Glove overlay ghosting."

He sat gingerly on the moss at the base of the tree and rested his hands on his knees. It was peaceful. He had never been able to relax in the "nature" of the real world—it was too open—but here, his physical body protected by seven locks, he felt safe. He reclined against the tree's bulging roots, and squinted up at the intensely blue sky above the massive, foreshortened trunk. He closed his eyes and waited for characters to appear.

A sudden rustle, and he snapped awake, automatically reaching to take a card from his Duel Disk—but of course, he wasn't wearing it, this was not a dueling world. He sat quietly and after a moment the sound came again. A movement of leaves, and something emerged from the bushes to his right.

Four legs, brindled brown and black fur. A long tail curved high over its back. A short muzzle, and black eyes. A wolf? No, a dog. As it came warily toward him he held his fist out, as he'd read was proper. The dog sniffed at his hand for almost a minute, then flopped down with its head on his thigh, watching him.

"You are a new template."

The dog blinked and its tail wagged over its back like a feather flag. Its dark eyes offered him fealty.

He wasn't sure if he had ever had a pet before his parents died, but he certainly understood the bond people spoke of with animals: it was likely to be a lesser version of the bond he had with his Blue Eyes. He slowly stroked the dog's thick fur. It was well-cared for: was the owner nearby?

A deep, amused voice spoke. "I see that Kee has found a new whelp for her litter. Or is this a bear cub too young to escape up the tree?"

Startled, he jumped up. Two men and a woman, composed only of the green lines of wireframe, had come into the clearing, flanking him, preventing escape. The woman and one of the men drew short wireframe swords. The dog danced around his feet, barking in excitement.

"They do say, lord," the woman said with a low laugh, "that some of the trees in this wood bear strange blossoms."

A third man—to Kaiba's surprise, fully rendered—entered the clearing. Dressed in light armor and helm, he folded his arms and contemplated Kaiba, then whistled softly. A horse picked its way out of the brush to his side. "What are you doing here?" he asked Kaiba, pulling off his gauntlets and putting them in a saddlebag.

"Item: Ryuken variable flags. Item: Digitized speech modulation," Kaiba commented, then asked, "Who the hell are _you_ to question _me_?"

"Who am I?" The armored vest went into the bag, and then he pulled off his helm. His long blond hair was tied back loosely with a strip of leather.

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. The blond hair was clearly a bug—all of the characters at this stage of development were supposed to have green hair and eyes if rendered to anything other than wireframe—and the last time a VR programs had deviated from the script he had found himself a prisoner of the Five. On the other hand, he was confident in the security he'd put in place for Tantalus. This was just a cosmetic bug, after all: since the starting point for the scenario had been the exchange he'd with Jounouchi at Duelist Kingdom, he must have inadvertently entered the corresponding hair color code. There was no reason not to finish testing the behavior triggers. "Yes, I asked who are _you_?"

The blond walked slowly towards him. "I am Lord Ryuken. This is _my_ forest. Now give me a good reason why _you_ are here." He stopped in front of Kaiba. His eyes were light brown.

 _I_ must _have been half-asleep when I programmed this,_ Kaiba thought with a grimace. "Item: Ryuken skin debug eye and hair color value." He cleared his throat, then said, carefully enunciating, "The standards for _daimyou_ must have fallen if someone like _you_ can become a lord." _First trigger._

Ryuken reached out and took hold of Kaiba's shirt. "Are you insulting me?" he asked, eyes narrowing.

 _Triggers seem to be working._ His heart pounding, Kaiba put his hand on Ryuken's wrist _(second trigger),_ then spoke the third trigger. "I could break you."

"Or, instead," Ryuken said, "We could grapple thus?" He pushed Kaiba against the tree and kissed him.

After a moment Kaiba turned his head to the side and shouted, "Abort! Abort!"

– his hands flailed, then pressed the pod canopy release. He sat up gasping. _Hard mouth. Strong hands._ "Item," he panted, annoyed to find his heart pounding. "Item: test character output levels."

Millie said, "Sensory Interface has no detectable glitches. Pressure, GSR, temperature, texture mapping—all per your program settings."

He supposed he should call this first full test a success—even though what he'd just experienced was an order of magnitude more powerful than he'd expected it to be. "I don't care what diagnostics say. The input to my suit was too high. I experienced tactile overload. Run more diagnostics on the Sensory Interface. Contact the R&D department and see if they can get someone intelligent to test the functions this time. Have them test the biosensors too," he grumbled as he gingerly peeled the suit down. "And add a Task Item: design an in-game interface to adjust input signal strength."

He was still making notes when the phone rang.

"What?"

"Kaiba?"

"Mai?" _Now what did she want?_ Having her work in the test lab at KaibaLand he could tolerate, but—calls to his private line were unacceptable.

"Can we talk about what happened the other day?"

"The other day?"

"While I got trapped with the others in the Virtual Reality world?"

It had been unfortunate that she'd been testing when he'd gone into the rigged VR game that his Board of Directors had set for him, as he hadn't been able to defeat the Five God Dragon before Mai was digitized. Of course, the Idiot Five had been too stupid to auto-delete the scratch file, and so the lost players were easily retrieved at the end of the game: still, he knew from talking to Mokuba that the de-digitizing experience had been almost as bad as having one's soul removed. He would not willingly put anyone through that—anyone not an enemy. "That was sabotage by former employees." He added grudgingly, "I realize it was unpleasant."

"I've thought of a way you can make it up to me."

"Oh?"

"I want you to come to a party I'm having in a few days."

"No. I'll write you a check. Compensation for your ... pain."

"Very funny," she said with a laugh. "It's a costume party, but," she said quickly, cutting off his protests, "You don't have to do a thing other than show up. I've got something for you to change into when you get here. And just so we're clear—I'm _not_ taking 'No' for an answer."

"The costume—it doesn't come with a leash, does it?" he asked.

Her laughter was an orange-gold ripple. "Oh, no, no. Trust me, everyone will love it."

.

He soon knew how condemned men felt waiting for their death sentences to be carried out: every day the party was closer, until finally it was The Day.

An hour before he was supposed to leave for Mai's his private line rang.

"Yes?"

"You're not thinking of calling in sick to my party, are you? Going back on your word?"

Although he had been mulling those very things, he snapped, "Of course not."

"Good. See you in an hour."

He took his blue brocade duster from the wardrobe and attached a KaibaCorp communicator to the lapel. The silver KC logo would beep and flash red if he got a call, and the integrated microphone-speaker allowed him to talk almost anywhere. He was hoping that the tests of the Sensory Interface module and the biosensor suit would finish tonight: since the techs had standing orders to contact him immediately with test results, he was counting on the call to give him an excuse to escape the torture of the party.

He arrived at Mai's precisely at 20:00. She answered the door, though it took him a moment to recognize her. She was wearing a long, dark blue wig (held in place with a wide ornamental headband) while her curves were hugged by a pleated sheath of green silk. She held a large purple scythe.

He nodded. "Hibikime."

"You like?" She smiled, set her scythe next to the door, and turned to give him the 360 degree view of her costume.

"Very accurate."

"Come this way, I've got yours in my bedroom."

It was hot in the apartment—unfortunately much too hot to wear his coat, even if costume Mai provided was minimal. No matter: he'd just carry his coat around until his phone call came. As they squeezed through the mass of people in her living room toward a narrow hallway he noticed a high percentage of women dressed as either Commencement Dance or Performance of Sword. There were also several Empress Judges and a Princess of Tsurugi, and a number of masked Ansatsu. He didn't recognize anyone he knew other than Yugi's grandfather, who though costumed as the Stern Mystic looked anything but stern as he ogled a Dark Witch reading his palm. Yugi was nowhere to be seen.

When they came to the end of the hallway, Mai opened the door to a dimly lit room. "Ignore the mess," she said cheerfully. Pulling a small duffel from underneath the bed, she unzipped it and took out a pair of black leather pants and a silky white shirt. "I can't _wait_ to see you in these," she bubbled. "There's talcum powder on the dresser—sprinkle some on your legs before you put the pants on, it'll help them go on easier. Oh, and," she took a small package from the bag, "this will help too." She wiggled fingers at him as she left. "Hurry out."

He locked the door. A deep breath did little to settle the roiling in his stomach. At least the evening would be finite.

The small package of "this" Mai had provided was a stretchy black low-slung thong. He was dubious, but reluctantly tried it on anyhow. Though it felt non-existent it seemed as functional as his briefs. He shook some of the powder into his palm, then stroked it over his thighs, a surprisingly pleasant sensation. He then pulled the leather pants on. They were stiff at first, and almost uncomfortably tight, but as the leather warmed it molded to him and became merely snug instead of constrictive . It was an interesting sensation, different than the feather-light biosensor suit. Odd, but pleasant... actually _, very_ pleasant, in fact. He unzipped and did some cautious re-arranging. Undoubtedly this sort of reaction was the source of the association of leather with sexual activity.

The white shirt turned out to be the worst piece of the costume—it had ties at the wrist, but no buttons at all up the front. Not that his shaking hands could have handled buttons anyhow. But what was he so nervous about, other than having people he didn't care about laugh at how ludicrous he looked? He overlapped the halves of the shirt front and tucked them tightly into his pants, but as soon as he moved the shirt gaped open. Did Mai have anything anywhere in this clutter that he could use to keep his shirt closed?

Nothing he could see in the bedroom. He quickly put his street clothes into the duffel and added his coat, folded with the communicator on top. He leaned against the door, composing himself. _I gave my word. I do not go back on my word._ "I will conquer my fear. My fear will pass through me, and when it is gone, only I will remain." Then he unlocked and opened the door.

The roar and heat of the party seemed to have doubled. He made his way down the hallway, head down, eyes averted, holding his shirt closed at the throat with his free hand and using the duffel like the prow of an icebreaker to part the crowd. When he came to the living room he saw a rolltop desk next to the French doors. Desks had staplers. He started to squeeze his way through the crowd.

What felt like an hour later he reached the desk. He rummaged, and found a paper clip. He was folding the edges of the shirt together to clip them closed when he heard a familiar voice nearby: Mazaki Anzu. He looked up, and had just enough time to register that she was dressed as Magician of Faith before she squealed, "Jou-kun! You look great!"

Jounouchi had come into the living room costumed as Kagemusha of the Blue Flame. Loose green sashed pants, no shirt. When he raised his hand and waved, muscles flowed in his arm and chest. His blond hair was pulled back into a high messy ponytail.

Kaiba's first thought was that Jounouchi looked far better half-undressed than he would have imagined. His second thought was that he needed to get out of the room _immediately_.

.

He fled through the French doors onto the balcony, which ran the entire length of the apartment. There was an oasis of shadow and silence just past the light spilling through the apartment's windows. He put the bag down and stood in the darkness, watching Domino City wink below, trying to shut out that part of his brain that kept blaring over and over _So it was an accident that you coded Ryuken to look like Jounouchi_ _?_

"No, it's was coincidence." He took slow, deliberate breaths. "Either way, it's of no consequence."

At least his escape had been unnoticed. It was optimal, actually: he had been seen by Mai, thus fulfilling his obligation to be present in "costume." All he need do now was wait for the call that would give him an excuse to leave. He looked over the rail: unfortunately, he'd have to leave Mai's apartment the way he'd come, as eight stories was a bit much to drop.

He watched the traffic lights far below: little Josephson junctions. Car headlights as electrons. Taillights? Hm, Doppler-shifted electrons, maybe ...

The French doors opened: Jounouchi. "Hey, there you are! Anzu said you ran out here." He walked over and stood on the other side of the pool of light. "Interesting costume Mai picked for you. What card are ya supposed to be?" He rested his forearms on the railing.

Kaiba reminded himself that this was the moron who wore a dog suit on TV last week, and focused on the resentment he felt over the invasion of his solitude. "No idea," he said coldly.

"I'm Kagemusha. I woulda rather been Flame Swordsman," Jounouchi said with an embarrassed half-laugh. "But Mai said the helmet would be too hard to make, and she talked me into this. Mai's costume is pretty good, don't ya think?"

Not knowing what else to do, Kaiba nodded once. Why was Jounouchi out there? Was he going to stay? With all the room on the balcony, why did he have to stand so close?

A blessed silence then, as apparently Jounouchi had run out of things to say and was forced to pretend to be interested in the sight of dark treetops. He Jounouchi shivered. "Kinda chilly tonight."

Kaiba glared from the corner of his eye at the jutting shoulder blades, the hint of ribs. "Idiot." Before he could stop himself he reached down, took his coat from the duffel, and held it out. "Here."

Clearly surprised, Jounouchi warily said, "Thanks," then reached across the pool of light to take the coat. "Nice shirt you're wearing," he said as he slipped into the coat, "Classy. But why a paper clip?"

"No buttons."

"Aw, there's gotta be ties in there. Pirate shirts always have little strings—I'll show ya," he said, and before Kaiba could move the blond had stepped close, pulled the paper clip off, and had his hand inside the shirt, rummaging. He stared as Jounouchi pulled out a thin cord from inside the shirt and threaded it though small holes in the shirt. How had he missed that?

"See? All better," Jounouchi said cheerfully, then stepped away, now standing in the center of the light.

_Why does he keep talking to me? Looking at me? And—that with the shirt? Why does it seem that it was just a reason to touch me? Is he standing closer now than he was before?_

He didn't like not understanding what was going on, and that made him queasy. He gripped the railing so hard the metal almost cut into his palms.

He might have remained paralyzed for hours if it hadn't been for his coat. Or rather, the communicator on the lapel, which began to blink. A little shaft of fear slammed into his stomach as Jounouchi turned to face him. He swallowed, then stepped over the duffel, murmured, "Don't talk," pressed the communicator between his thumb and finger, and bent forward to speak.

"Yes?"

"Kaiba-shachou? Sorry to disturb you sir, but we've just finished the tests you ordered."

He continued to hold the coat as he listened to the tech run through the test results. Well, he attempted to listen, but his mind kept wandering ... it was very distracting, the way Jounouchi's breath bathed his left ear with warmth with every exhale. Amend that: every _forceful_ exhale. Did he always breathe that hard? Wait—wasn't accelerated respiration a sign of sexual excitement?

With that thought Kaiba's mouth went dry. The formula for the gravitational force popped in to his head: attraction is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between two bodies … this close, Jounouchi's body definitely radiated heat.

He came back to himself as the tech finished and said crisply, ''I'll expect to see a summary report e-mailed to me before you go home tonight," realizing as he spoke that he was grandstanding.

"Yes sir."

He added, "Good work."

"Thank you!" The astonishment in her voice came though clearly.

Then the tech rang off, but Kaiba still held the coat, his head bowed, unable to let go. A breeze blew a strand of Jounouchi's hair against his face. He hated feeling this stupid, this unsure of what to do.

"Kaiba?" Jounouchi asked quietly.

Kaiba straightened up and looked down at him, the illumination enough to see that Jounouchi's expression was slightly puzzled.

It was infuriating, not knowing how to interpret anything. There was no way to know if Jounouchi was attracted to him. And what if he was? What then? Was he supposed to wait for a clear signal, for Jounouchi to make the first move? He knew the triggers for Ryuken, what to say to activate each particular programmed response, but this wasn't VR. There was no way he could abort and reload.

On the other hand, he suddenly wanted to know what it was like to kiss a real person, and so, despite the danger of miscalculation, he thought back to what he'd read about the flirting sequence proceed. Eye contact was frequently mentioned as an initiator: they already had that. Subliminal indicators of receptivity was a reasonable next step, and so he took a deep breath, as he exhaled parting his lips a fraction of an inch. Parted lips were supposed to indicate willingness to kiss.

If he hadn't been watching so carefully, he would have missed the widening of the brown eyes. That was a reaction of surprise, even shock, and he felt a twist of panic: had he misjudged? Well, he'd see soon enough, if Jounouchi stopped the sequence by stepping back. He leaned forward the tiniest bit, his heart beginning to thud, still expecting Jounouchi to back away: but the next moment one corner of Jounouchi's wide mouth curved up in and he leaned forward, putting his hand on Kaiba's arm.

Just before they made contact Kaiba could have sworn he heard a roar.

(Years later, every detail accompanying those first slow, tentative sips was still indelibly clear: the faint sound of each kiss like a raindrop on a leaf. The blurred sight of Jounouchi's eyes closing. The feel of the communicator's metal letters under his thumb. The faint aroma of cigarette smoke from the blond's hair.)

A shadow moved in his peripheral vision: he let go of the communicator and stepped away, startled. Mai was at the French doors, twisting the wand to close the blinds. _Had she seen them?_ He heard a quiet click: locking the doors to the balcony?

He turned back to Jounouchi, who was frozen in place, his eyes still closed, his jaw and mouth tilted up, like a blind thing mutely seeking the sun … "Is that how you always end phone calls?" he murmured, opening his eyes with a sleepy smile. When Kaiba didn't reply, he said, "Hang me up again."

As he reached out to take the coat lapel again Jounouchi quickly closed the space between them, taking hold of his upper arms to pull them together.

_Tantalize: To tease or torment by presenting something desirable but continually out of reach._

Not out of reach now, as they were kissing again now, more firmly. When Jounouchi's mouth opened wider Kaiba copied him; when Jounouchi slid his tongue into Kaiba's mouth and their tongues touched a quicksilver flutter went through him, a shower of sparks that turned molten as they descended. It was seemed as though Jounouchi was not going to run he gathered his courage and slid his right hand around to the back of Jounouchi's head and up into his bound hair, curving his fingers around a handful, marveling. This was nothing like he would have imagined it—but then how could he have imagined that something so improbable would happen? that Jounouchi Katsuya, the noisy trash who he was sure hated him, would do anything other than bark angrily at him? It felt unreal, as if he were weightless, racing at light speed toward an exhilarating unknown—and yet he also felt more present than he had in weeks or perhaps even years, completely aware of every muscle and bone, how gravity held his feet to the balcony … the solidity of the warm body pressed against him, thigh to thigh, chest to chest, arms now holding him tight. As Jounouchi held his face, kissing his jaw, his throat, a detached part of him filed away the sensations pounding through him, how fast his heart was beating, how ragged his breathing had become, how quickly he was becoming aroused.

Jounouchi's lips were brushing his ear, and then he was whispering, "This is good." Now his tongue was tracing the edge of Kaiba's ear; now he was lightly biting the earlobe lightly before sucking it. At Kaiba's almost inaudible gasp Jounouchi shifted his weight from side to side, rubbing himself purposefully against the hardening ridge in Kaiba's leather pants. His hands slid down over the curve of Kaiba's ass and then suddenly grabbed him hard, fingers digging deep into the leather cleft, as if to tear the seams open.

The cumulative pleasure from all this was so intense that Kaiba's knees almost gave out. He thought _I want to keep doing this. I wish we were far from here. In my bed. In_ any _bed. Or anywhere ..._ A flood of images came then, of hands and mouths and skin and masked faces, and his head cleared.

What the hell was he thinking, getting carried away like this? He abruptly drew back, studying the dimly-lit face before him. The usual expression that so often annoyed him—pugnacious and naive—was gone. In its place was a sensuous, wolf-like confidence, eyes half closed, a faint, contented smile. Jounouchi leaned forward to nuzzle his neck, making small questioning noises as he tugged at the leather pants. "More?" It was demand as much as question.

Kaiba closed his eyes and shivered: this was a fantasy come to life, someone seemingly impatient with desire for him, but he was probably right to mistrust it. It was too sudden. Jounouchi wouldn't have gone from hostile or indifferent to—different—so fast unless ... _He's setting you up_ the acid voice inside of him asserted. _Drawing you out to make a fool of you. Waiting until you're on your knees blowing him before calling the others out here to witness your submission. It's the anticipation of humiliating you that's got him so turned on, hot at the idea of getting back at you for all those times you slapped him down._

And yet ... Was he being too suspicious? Was there was a chance it was genuine? He had to be objective, not let either lust or fear cloud the facts. He was sure that, had this happened at school, it would be a prank engineered by Jounouchi and his friend Honda, but _Mai_ had planned the party, she had picked the costumes, and she seemed to be trying to give the two of them privacy, if that was indeed why she'd closed the blinds a moment ago. He couldn't believe she'd be involved in such a take-down.

Well, he'd never find out what was going on by just standing here. "More? How _much_ more?" he asked, his pulse thundering in his throat.

"Whatever you—" Jounouchi began, slipping one finger inside the waistband to touch fevered skin.

Loud noises erupted in the apartment, and the French doors rattled. Yugi and Mai were shouting.

Jounouchi pulled away from him. "Oh shit!" he said hoarsely. He yanked off the coat and shoved it at Kaiba. "Quick, put this on."

"Why?" he asked. "I wasn't wearing it when I came out here."

"Doesn't matter. And button it," Jounouchi barked. At Kaiba's look he said more quietly, "Because it looks like ya got a friggin' lead pipe in your pants. They don't need to know—"

The French doors flew open just as he shrugged into the coat.

" _My_ costume is loose, and hides stuff better," Jounouchi added under his breath. "Hey, guys what's up?" he said easily, turning to them.

Kaiba, facing the the lights of downtown Domino, buttoned his duster as unobtrusively as he could, his face burning. Now he'd find out what the game was. He braced himself for Jounouchi to say something like, _"Guess what everyone! Kaiba's a total homo!_ "

"What's going on out here?" Yugi demanded, using his rough "dueling voice" and not his usual cheery tenor. " _Mai_ ," he said with a snap of hostility, "seemed to think it was appropriate to lock her balcony doors even after I commented that you were unaccounted for."

"What's the big deal?" Jounouchi asked.

"With all the recent kidnappings and sudden disturbances in this group, I was naturally concerned when I noticed that you were missing," Yugi said.

"Aww, well ya can see there's no problem," Jounouchi replied. "And anyhow, I had Mister Martial Arts here to protect me from evildoers."

"But why was Kaiba out here?" Yugi asked in a chill, silky tone.

It seemed that Dark was even more jealously possessive of Jounouchi than Mutou was. "Headache," Kaiba said, his back still to the others. "I came out here for the quiet. Unfortunately a noisy stray followed me. It might be wise, Mai," he turned, folding his arms as a dozen more guests flowed though the doors, "to spray for fleas."

Jounouchi blustered. "Why you arrogant, stinkin' son of a—I was just trying to be sociable!"

As the guests laughed Yugi pursed his lips. In the dim light his shadowed face seemed twisted with emotion. "How fortunate that you had a secluded place to retreat to, Kaiba," his eyes flicked over them critically—and did his glance linger below the waist?—"and such a pleasant companion to pass the time."

"I appreciate your concern," he sniped back. "However, my technicians just called with some important test results, so I'll be going."

Mai turned around. "Okay people, move along, nothing to see here. It's time for the buffet."

As he went inside Jounouchi followed close behind him, pushing against his back as if impatient.

It told him enough.

.

He kept his face carefully impassive until he was back in Mai's bedroom, then locked the door, and pressed his fists to his forehead, unsuccessfully fighting a grin. He felt shaky, but in a completely different way than before. Unbelievable. Not only hadn't Jounouchi told, he'd covered _._

"Come home with me," Kaiba whispered, practicing. His groin gave a warning twitch. He'd better slow down. _N to the third: 1, 8, 27, 64, 125, 216, 343, 512, 729, 1000, 1331 …_ He unbuttoned the duster, then unzipped and stepped out of the leather pants to contemplate his situation. He had to delay his body, so he squeezed himself ruthlessly, to the point of pain, then pulled his briefs on over everything. He'd wear the shirt home and have it laundered before returning it to Mai.

He heard soft footsteps and low voices outside the door. A soft knock. "Kaiba?"

It was Mai: he froze. _Did I lock the door?_

"Probably in the bathroom." Jounouchi.

"Probably." A pause, then he heard her ask, very quietly, "So how did it go?"

He moved noiselessly as close to the door as he dared.

"Man, it was something. By the end," the deeper voice said softly. "I just wanted ta ..." It sounded like he growled.

Kaiba grinned again. His face was starting to hurt; he wasn't accustomed to smiling.

Another sudden knock startled him. "Kaiba? Are you OK in there?"

He held his breath and stood perfectly still.

After a few seconds he heard Mai murmur, "Still busy in the bathroom, I guess. So it wasn't what you expected?"

"Well, considering—" Party noise blotted out the rest of the sentence.

"Really?" She sounded surprised.

"He freaked when everyone barged out there," Jounouchi said.

After that Kaiba went to the far corner of the room, pulled on his pants, re-buttoned his duster, picked up his duffel, and opened the door.

They were still in the hall. Jounouchi was tenderly tucking a strand of Mai's blue wig behind her ear.

Mai smiled when she saw him. "Kaiba, can I talk you into staying just a little longer? I've just put out the buffet."

He glanced at Jounouchi. Wolf was gone: the brown eyes looked a bit abashed.

"I have to go." Now they just needed a moment alone so that he could ask Jounouchi to follow.

"Oh," she said. "Well, if duty calls ..." Her small mouth drooped in a small pout.

"I left the pants on the bed. I'll have the shirt dry-cleaned. What do I owe you for the—other?" He could _not_ bring himself to say it.

"Oh, consider it my treat." The pout disappeared as she smiled. "Everyone enjoyed seeing you in such an appealing costume, even if it was just briefly. Several of my girlfriends even asked about you." Her eyes twinkled mischievously as she added, "the handsome mystery man."

Was she was making fun of him? No, she was sincere. No wonder Jounouchi was crazy about her.

And Jounouchi _was_ crazy about her. It was very obvious: even he, who knew so little about such activities that he had had to research them, even he could see that Jounouchi loved Mai, that they were a couple.

And with that a completely different interpretation of the conversation he had just overheard fell into place. _"_ So it wasn't what you expected?" _Experimentation._ Why hadn't it occurred to him sooner? Costumes. Jounouchi's uncharacteristic behavior. Mai preventing anyone else from interrupting them on the balcony—the whole party had been a setup. Maybe it was Jounouchi helping Mai fulfill a voyeuristic fantasy of watching two guys kiss, or Mai helping her boyfriend Jounouchi scratch an itch ... the motivation didn't matter. Once again he had completely misread a situation involving "interpersonal relations" and jumped to false conclusions. Well, at least he had figured it out before making a fool of himself.

Crestfallen, not trusting himself to speak, he pushed past them quickly, dimly registering Mai saying goodbye. He was going to focus on getting out the door. He was going to ignore everything else. He was not going to turn around. _Powers of seven: 7, 49, 343, 2401, 16807, 117649, 823543, 5764801 ..._

The door slammed behind him and echoed in the empty hall. He usually took the stairs, but this time decided to wait for the elevator. Of course he was loitering. Why pretend otherwise? Even though it was pointless, he still indulged a tiny hope that Jounouchi would come out after him.

The elevator came. It was empty; he let it go.

He heard an apartment door open, and his heart leapt, but he forced himself not to turn around. But it was only one of Mai's neighbors, carrying trash to the incinerator.

He punched the down button, and watched morosely as the elevator came and went a second time.

He should have known better. He could almost hear Gozaburo's voice: "You made the same mistake _twice_ , Seto? Plan on a career as dishwasher, then: that's the only job for someone of such low intelligence."

Furious, he jabbed the elevator button again and again until the doors opened and he could descend to the street and his waiting limo.

.

He calculated cube roots on the ride home, disciplining himself with numbers as he nodded to the driver, as he climbed the stairs, as he checked on the sleeping Mokuba.

But once he stripped and stepped into the shower, he let it all flood out.

"Hot."

What had he been expecting?

"Nothing! I expected nothing! I should have expected nothing!" He poured out his disappointment until he was hoarse, then rolled it into a ball and shoved it deep inside him. So now he knew what it felt like to be the recipient of someone's desire. Unfortunately, it had only been a temporary condition. He had been a handy object to satisfy a curiosity. A product sample. A lab rat.

What next? He held his face up to the spray.

Well, clearly, there was no next. It had been a one-time thing. Mai and Jounouchi had got what they wanted. _I'm sure they'll get an extra laugh over how fast I fell for it. The cold fish Kaiba Seto, moaning and clutching and grinding._ He could imagine the jeers and comments that would circulate at school. Fortunately, he'd completed all the exercises in all of his textbooks months ago, and didn't have to go in until examinations. Would it be forgotten by then? No, of course not. Seto Kaiba the Clueless Faggot would be too juicy a topic to die quickly.

He gritted his teeth as he reached for the soap. Well, there was no undoing it. He'd been stupid, there would be consequences … or would there? He could claim that nothing had happened, that he had called Jounouchi's bluff. No one except Mai had seen them touching. Yugi's Dark seemed as though he suspected there had been more than talk, but he had no proof. And Jounouchi might not even say anything, keep the escapade secret.

Good that he hadn't gone too far, then. It gave them less ammunition to use against him.

He stepped from the shower and reached for a towel.

And the night needn't be written off as a total waste. Not if he turned it into data, a benchmark to identify where the Tantalus program and the biosensor suit needed more work. Right now, the program was still too rough to compete with "the real thing" (which was why kissing Jounouchi had been so satisfying). Texture mapping would definitely need to be adjusted. _(Lips are sometimes slightly chapped.)_ He'd far underestimated the number of nerve endings that needed to be stimulated. _(Earlobes had never occurred to him.)_ He needed to introduce an element of random motion whenever there was full-torso contact. And temperature variance: he hadn't realized that bare skin gave off so much heat. It meant a lot more work than he'd estimated, but it would all pay off in the final product: once he perfected sight and sound and touch and taste and smell Tantalus would provide complete immersion. It would take effort to remember that it _wasn't_ real. In fact, it would be better than real, because he— _users_ —could be touched without pain and humiliation being involved. There would be no ambiguity about intentions because, unlike people, computer programs did what they were programmed to.

As he pulled on his pajamas he nodded decisively. Proceeding with Tantalus was the logical thing to do. As he placed the white shirt atop his dresser his eyes fell on the dragon _netsuke_. _"When the poison is overcome, the lines will change, the time of darkness will pass, and the light will return."_

"Hn. Sure it will."

.

_~ to be continued ~_

_._

_._

(122) 2 September 2013


	5. Conference Center

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

_(Takes place after the warehouse fire, but before Kaiba's meeting with Ishizu.)_

* * *

.

He was trying. It just wasn't working.

Mokuba usually gave him a detailed accounting of his day during dinner, carrying the conversation through classwork and teachers into the more important topics of video games, movies, manga, and escapades at school. In the past Kaiba had found it easy to remember all of Mokuba's interests and to keep track of his friends, acquaintances, and their ever-shifting alliances ... But lately it had become harder and harder to maintain focus on anything other than the program.

"Brendan just ignored my suggestions as if I wasn't there and made a big show of following everything that _Kyle_ said. It made me so mad! Our science project is going to _suck_."

"I thought those boys were your friends?"

"Well, they were – last week. But when Bren's cousin found out I wouldn't get a free Blue Eyes card for him he told Bren not to be my friend. And it's too late to change project teams now."

"I see." Kaiba nodded and sipped his coffee.

He was proud that Mokuba had realized very early that generosity from someone in their economic bracket was always misinterpreted as a rich kid's attempt to "buy" friends. Mokuba was always careful to take only slightly more than just enough money to pay his own way when he went places with his friends. On the other hand, Kaiba had also noticed – but not questioned – the occasional cash disbursements (some of them quite large) made from Mokuba's on-line account. He was sure that Mokuba had been behind the payoff of a car loan for the father of one of his friends, a man severely injured in a factory accident. Kaiba was less impressed of Mokuba's secret philanthropy than he was of the computer skills and bluffing involved in pulling it off. Good skills for a future CEO.

"So I figure if he can't think for himself he's not worth being my friend."

"A reasonable assessment. What will you do about the science project?"

Mokuba shrugged. "The best I can, I guess. The teacher won't let me do extra credit, she only counts work done in class."

"She still thinks I'm helping you with your work?"

"Seems like it." Mokuba stared angrily at his soup.

"I will to talk to them again."

There was a lull, and Kaiba's mind slid away ...

_._

_brown eyes studying his face_

_._

"What's going on?" Mokuba paused, spoon in mid-air, concerned about the emotions flickering over his brother's face.

"I don't know what you mean." Kaiba twisted in his chair to check the wall clock so that he could turn away from Mokuba. "You have 95 minutes until lights out."

"C'mon, I know there's _something_. What's bothering you?"

"There's nothing, Mokuba. Just eat."

Mokuba, however, wouldn't let it go. "I bet I know what it is. You're lonesome stuck here with just me, aren't you? You should get a girlfriend," he added, "someone you could date sometimes."

Kaiba turned to look at him. "What makes you think I need that?"

"Well," Mokuba said, leaning forward conspiratorially over the table, "You are that age, you know. You have urges." His voice had an unintentionally funny "let me explain this to you in terms you can understand" tone.

Kaiba suppressed a smile over his 12 year old brother playing the part of the salty uncle counseling in euphemisms. "Oh, do I?"

"Yup." Mokuba stirred his bowl and said carefully, "I was hoping that you would meet someone nice at Mai's party. Yugi told me that there were a lot of hot girls there."

Kaiba said dryly, "And Yugi's grandfather was chasing most of them."

"Oh, _gross!_ "

There was another silence. They ate.

.

“ _... You should hang up again.”_

_._

Damn it.

"So did you?"

"Did I what?"

"Meet anyone new?"

He forced himself to eat a mouthful before he answered. How long would it be until everything he ate stopped tasting like sawdust? "No. No one new."

Mokuba gave a small shrug, said "That's too bad," and went back to his noodles.

.

_a hand tugging at his waistband. "More?"_

_._

He put his hands over his face and rubbed his eyes. He had to stop thinking about it.

"I'm not surprised."

"Hm?" He looked through his fingers.

"Yugi says you spent the whole party on the balcony."

"Yugi talks too much." When was Mokuba having these conversations with Mutou? Visiting the Game Shop on the sly?

"But did you? Spend the whole party on the balcony?"

He shrugged. “I had a headache."

"Did you get the headache before or after you talked to Jounouchi?" asked Mokuba with a grin.

Kaiba could feel the blood drain from his face. "Jounouchi?"

Mokuba giggled and said with a snort, "I know that guy drives you crazy. I heard he was out there bugging you.” Mokuba poked at his noodles. "I just can't picture you two chatting like friends."

"We didn't. I'm not friends with the mediocrity. We were just in the same place at the same time. It meant nothing." He heard with surprise the bitterness in his voice. "Change the subject, Mokuba," he said firmly.

"Okay." Mokuba knew the tone well and didn't give it a second thought. "Hey, I almost forgot – Millie said some packages were delivered to the Conference Center today. I went over and put them on the table for you."

"Hm. More than one?" He pushed his bowl away. "I wonder if the German treatise came, it's one I need for background material."

Mokuba noticed his brother's change of tone. "So you probably wanna go over there right now, huh?" he asked, deliberately casual. "And do more work on that new program?"

Just as Mokuba could read Kaiba's every nuance, Kaiba could read Mokuba's. This was the "So you're going to bail on me again?" voice.

Kaiba shifted guiltily in the chair. He had let his brother down so many times lately: even before Duelist Kingdom, his failure to handle the shock he'd felt after being crushed by Mutou's Exodia had given Pegasus the opportunity to conspire with The Five and kidnap Mokuba. After Duelist Kingdom it had been necessary to avoid him to hide his injuries and the feeling that just being in the same room would somehow corrupt his brother, inflict some cumulative damage. Time had sluiced away some of these feelings, but Kaiba still felt odd. Not so much unclean anymore as just – _unreal_. Like a ghost. He had hoped that forcing himself to go through the motions of their old rituals – dinners together, reading aloud before bed, weekend drives – would help, and it was: it just wasn't enough.

And then, to be honest, since Mai's party there was an additional reason. Whenever he was alone, temporarily off-duty from his role as Mokuba's parent, Kaiba would – as guilty as it made him feel – keep replaying that evening on the balcony. He kept telling himself it was in the service of science, that he needed to qualify and quantify and analyze as much as he could for Tantalus before the memories faded, but he was honest enough to admit that that was not all of it. There was always a surge of liberation each night when Mokuba fell asleep, and a building resentment when Mokuba dragged bedtime out.

"Not until later."

" _Nii-sama?_ " It was the wheedle voice.

"Hn?"

"Since I finished dinner, can I have dessert?"

"I suppose so."

Mokuba bounced off the chair and snagged a chocolate parfait from the refrigerator. "All-right!"

Kaiba folded his arms and watched him eat with a combination of affection and impatience.

"It's cool they let you do home study." Mokuba had already gobbled half of the tall parfait.

"Yes." Being in a room with more than two or three other people still made him tense to the point of migraine, even if he sat with his back to the wall and close to an escape route (as he had done in the few KaibaCorp meetings he couldn't handle via videoconferencing). Not having to be be around – Yugi and his friends – was an added benefit.

"Will you be done with the project research by the time I get up for school?" Mokuba had a chocolate mousse mustache.

"If I get momentum during the night, yes. You know how these things go. If not I'll call before you leave."

"Anything I can help you with? Play some test duels maybe?"

"The new simulation isn't a dueling program, Mokuba. There's nothing in it that you can test."

"Really? Not a dueling program? What kind is it then? or don't you want to jinx it by saying?""

"Jinx? What kind of talk is that, jinx? Surely you don't believe in that 'bad luck" bullshit? No, this program – " He thought about how to phrase it.

.

_Ryuken pushing him against the tree_

_._

"It's power struggles and – alliances – in feudal Japan."

"Oh that sounds cool! Will there be sword fights and castles?"

"Yes," he said, laughing despite everything, "at some point there will be sword fights and castles."

.

After reading the next chapter in the newest Harry Potter book (Mokuba sleepily pronounced as he nodded off that Umbridge was the most hateful person _ever_ ), Kaiba sprinted downstairs and through the hidden entrance into the tunnel system.

He'd started a complete overhaul of the security system (at both the house and KaibaLand) after Mokuba's kidnapping. It hadn't yet been in place when Pegasus's henchman had treed him in his office and he'd had to escape out the window, and had been only partially completed when the Five Boneheads had tried to trap Mokuba in the VR pod at KaibaLand. But it was fully implemented now, guarding every access point of the tunnel system that connected key buildings. And rather than being a passive system of locks, it was now equipped to actively deter intruders.... in other words, it was armed.

The tunnels, like the entire Kaiba estate, had originally been designed by Gozaburo to create a modern equivalent of a castle and keep – complete with escape routes – that could masquerade as a genteel country retreat. The mansion, situated on high cliffs facing the sea to the east, had a delta of outbuildings to the south, including a greenhouse, a pool house, several guest cabins, stables with an indoor equestrian arena, the airplane hanger, and a materials warehouse. Only the hanger and the warehouse had been in active use since Gozaburo's death.

The only other in-use structure on the Kaiba property was the Conference Center at the north-east corner of the estate. Situated on the very edge of the cliff, it was reached by a gated access road that ran along the north boundary of the property. The tall, single story building, entered via a walled courtyard, had its own street address and parking lot. Inside, a spacious high-ceilinged room, decorated on three sides by narrow clerestory windows (the fourth wall, of thick bullet-proof glass, faced the sea) offered an enormous table, casual seating areas, and a fireplace. A small, super-efficient galley kitchen was tucked into the corner next to the entrance. In Gozaburo's time the Conference Center had been used for clandestine meetings with heads of state as well as informal chess symposia. Mokuba liked having his birthday parties there, and the parking lot and isolation from the main house made it acceptable to Kaiba for that purpose. KaibaCorp execs also had off-site meetings there once or twice a year. An out-of-the-way building that everyone knew about, and no one paid much attention to.

Perfect for hiding something in plain sight.

The Conference Center had a secret that only Kaiba and Mokuba knew. A concealed spiral staircase descended from a corner of the Conference Center to a subterranean workshop buried inside the cliff. This hidden level, The Weyr, was actually a cave, the mouth hidden by KaibaCorp's best SolidImage® holo projectors. The stone ledge at the front of The Weyr was wide enough to land one of the remote-controlled helicopters on, if needed.

Although easily accessible via a special branch of the tunnel system, Mokuba never went to The Weyr uninvited, because it was where Kaiba had always done his best work – until recently at least. Tonight, as on other nights since the party, he walked past all the tricks and details that usually captured his attention – past color printouts of costumes, armor and architectural details, past maps and walkthroughs and scripts and schematics, intent only on scripting that night on the balcony to end in a more satisfactory way.

.

After half an hour he leaned back in his chair, propped his legs on the desk – and sighed in exasperation at his tented pants.

"Listen, _nikubashira_ , once I finish this sequence and you can have all the fun you want!"

_**now** _

"No."

He picked up the tablet notebook and reviewed: _Ryuken BATTLEMENTS vers._06._ He was refining the flow chart and updating the requirements for each resource, but he kept feeling that he'd forgotten something:

 _START (POV = P1, Ryuken = NPC1)_  
P1 triggers NPC1; (p1_eyes p1_lips npc1_eyes)  
NPC1 -  > P1 kiss level 1; (npc1_lips p1_lips); (exe_kiss1)  
Interruption; (p1_proprioception npc1_freezeframe)  
Resume kiss NPC1 - > P1 kiss level 1; (npc1_lips p1_lips); (exe_kiss1)  
P1 touches NPC1 hair; (p1_lips npc1_lips p1_hands npc1_hair)  
NPC1 increase proximity P1; (npc1_hands p1_midtorso)  
NPC1 - > P1 Escalate kiss level 2; (npc1_lips p1_lips npc1_tongue p1_tongue); (exe_kiss2)  
Initiate tumescence feedback P1; (p1_midtorso npc1_midtorso p1_penis npc1_penis); (exe_bokki1)  
NPC1 - > P1 Escalate kiss to level 3; (npc1_lips p1_lips npc1_tongue p1_tongue); (exe_kiss3)  
P1 - > NPC1 Embrace level 2; (p1_arm p1_uppertorso npc1_uppertorso); (exe_bokki2)  
P1 Caress NPC1 (ID # TBD); (p1_hand, p1_fingertips npc1_uppertorso)  
!!400dpi+ skin texture required!!

He took a break around midnight, realizing that he'd completely forgotten about the packages that Mokuba had mentioned.

He keyed the staircase code, then stood still for a retinal scan as he pressed his thumb to the DNA pad. Above him he heard the faint whir of the motor retracting the hidden panel in the floor of the Conference Center. He climbed into darkness.

As he reached the top of the staircase he stood until his eyes adjusted. The metal security blinds over the seaward windows allowed just enough light in for the huge table to show as a very dark gray oval in the blackness. After a moment he saw a short dark tower at one end: his packages. He scooped them up, double-checked the motion sensors in each corner, then went back downstairs.

Three of the packages contained some of the clothing that Millie had ordered for him. One had black pants and turtlenecks, a second various _yukata._ The top item in the third package (which he saw had shipped from Milan) was a heavy purple brocade duster with pagoda-like shoulders: no need to see more of _that_. He folded it back into its box with a mixture of defiance and embarrassment.

The fourth, heaviest box was full of books he'd ordered as research and reference material for the program. He unpacked _Sexuell Praxis in Feudaljapan_ and set the rest of the books on the floor next to his reading chair. Then he traded his bathrobe for one of the _yukata_ – a dark blue one with a subtle pattern – and found his mind clearing, like a telescope being brought into focus. He put his notebook on the table next to him and began to read.

.

He'd finished with the two German treatises by dawn, and, after a stretch, some water, and a meal bar, gave Mokuba a quick call. Then he started on the French monographs.

He had the monographs finished shortly after ten. He had just started to flip through the last book in the box, a well-illustrated history of _bushido_ , and was thinking about coffee when the doorbell rang.

Or rather, the security panel blinked to let him know that someone was ringing the bell upstairs.

Curious, he ran up the stairs, book in hand. The regular delivery people knew to leave packages in the drop box, but a substitute driver might not. With no one to sign for it who knew where the package would go. He put his book on the counter in the long narrow kitchen, then went to check the surveillance camera.

A delivery boy stood in the courtyard, his back to the door. He was lean, leggy – a runner's build – with light shaggy hair. A short jacket was bunched up around his waist: his hands were shoved into the pockets of worn jeans.

Kaiba, body humming from sleeplessness and a vague sense of yearning, rested his head against the door and stared wearily at the screen. The curse of his position was that the only truly private place was in his head or in the VR program – everything else he did and said was always in the spotlight. Every action had the potential to hurt the company, and anything that hurt the company threatened his ability to provide a bulletproof, secure future for Mokuba. More than just the CEO, he _was_ Kaiba Corporation. Had he been an average citizen, he might have had some leeway for sexy strangers: but Seto Kaiba was not an average citizen.

As if he was aware of the scrutiny, the delivery boy turned to look over his shoulder at the door. It was Jounouchi.

Kaiba hesitated. What in hell was this? Exhaling once to ready himself, he unlocked and opened the door.

"Hey, Kaiba," Jounouchi said nervously. He stared. "You're wearing a robe. Were ya sleeping?"

"You're cutting class," Kaiba said. Without waiting for a reply, he asked, "How did you know I was here?"

Jounouchi shrugged. "You weren't in school, so I figured I'd find you if just kept ringing doorbells at your house. Or I'd find someone who knew where you were."

" _Did_ anyone tell you I was here?" Whoever had was about to get fired.

"No, this is the first building I buzzed. Guess Lady Luck is helping me." He looked around. "I thought your place'd be bigger than this, though. Nice place, though. I like those faces." He pointed up at the eaves, set with stylized Medusa-heads.

"Hn. _Why_ are you here?" His tone was harsher than he intended.

Jounouchi gave a faint half-smile. "Ah, well, you left so fast the other night, I – "

"You what?" Kaiba prompted. _Come on, get to it._

Jounouchi bristled under Kaiba's cross-examination. "I thought maybe I did something. That pissed you off or something."

"That's idiotic. What could you do to me?" _He expects me to believe that he cut class and came all this way to find out if I was angry? How ridiculous._

Jounouchi shrugged. "I guess nothing." His expression had become guarded. After several beats of silence, he started, "See, I just thought – " He shook his head, looked down at his shoes, "Well, I was wrong, I guess." He shoved his hands in his pockets, then said stonily, "Okay, well, sorry I bothered you. I'll get outta your hair," then turned and started walking towards the courtyard gate.

What the hell? "Suit yourself." Kaiba said loudly, then turned and went inside, leaving the front door open.

In the kitchen, he took down a small espresso pot, measuring cups, beans, and the grinder from one of the cabinets that lined the hallway-like space. He heard the door close. Had Jounouchi come inside? Kaiba stood absolutely still but heard nothing. After a full minute, and feeling a twinge of disappointment, he shrugged and measured beans into the grinder.

A few seconds later the blond came into the kitchen. He was shoeless, and had removed his jacket. "Coffee? Can I get a cup?" He put his jacket on the counter near the door. "Before I go?"

Without a word, Kaiba added another measure of beans to the grinder. He then put the small pot back in the cabinet and took down the larger one, forgetting once again about the almost-healed cuts on his wrist as he reached up.

"What happened to your arm?"

Shit. "Cut myself."

"You don't mean like – "

"It was an accident." He pressed the button on the grinder, which echoed like a swarm of hornets in the confined space.

"Musta been some accident." Jounouchi stood nearby and watched. He pointed to the pot. "I've never seen a coffee maker like that." The tall hexagonal pot had tapered halves that screwed together at a small-waisted middle.

"Italian. It's Italian. Water goes in the bottom, and the coffee goes in the _imbouto,"_ Kaiba held up a funnel-shaped metal piece, _"_ between the top and bottom chambers." He carefully measured water into the bottom section of the pot.

" _Imbouto_ ," Jounouchi repeated dutifully. Feigning interest.

What the hell? The flirting bullshit again? Annoyed, Kaiba was nevertheless still intensely aware of the presence at his side as he measured and tamped a precise amount of coffee into the _imbouto._ He twisted the halves of the pot together savagely, trying to kill the flutter in his throat.

Jounouchi's stomach rumbled loudly. Embarrassed, he took a step back, folding his arms across his belly with a small laugh.

Kaiba shook his head. Mokuba had make a joke once about how Jounouchi sucked up food like a vacuum cleaner. Hadn't he eaten breakfast? And how _had_ he traveled here? He didn't have a car or a motorbike – had he walked all the way here from – wherever it was he lived? Pointing to a large cabinet at the end of the kitchen, he said, "Food in there."

Jounouchi opened the cabinet, which disguised a freezer compartment. "Whoa, all the comforts of home!" He rummaged for a moment, then – "Beef bowls!" He took one and closed the freezer. "I love these. Where can I heat it up?"

Kaiba opened the cabinet which housed the microwave.

While the beef bowl cooked, Jounouchi opened one of the other cupboards. "What else ya got in here?"

"Please feel free to make yourself at home, Jounouchi," Kaiba murmured, feeling an odd mixture of irritation and fascination.

"Wasabi peas!” the blond cried happily. He pulled out and tore open the bag. "Oh, it's a good brand," he coughed, "when they make your eyes water like this."

Kaiba watched him eat handful after handful. Mokuba was right. Jounouchi was a vacuum cleaner.

Jounouchi suddenly noticed Kaiba's expression and held out the bag. "Wanna have some?"

Kaiba shook his head. "Not mixed with coffee."

"Aaaa." Jounouchi waved his hand. "I have a cast iron stomach. I can eat anything." He rolled the bag shut, folding the corners elaborately somehow so that the bag stayed shut, put the bag back in the cupboard, then leaned against the wall of cabinets as the microwave continued to whirr. After 15 seconds or so, he started doing something odd. He'd glance at Kaiba, then look down as if studying the floor, then glance up for a second, then look away again. After four or five cycles of this he seemed to become mesmerized by the loosely-tied belt of Kaiba's _yukata_.

The microwave beeped, breaking the spell. Jounouchi took out the beef bowl, stirred it, began to eat quickly.

"Do you chew at all?" Kaiba asked dryly.

The blond made a show of jawing the food, then picked up a beef slice in the chopsticks and held it out. "Want some? It's good.”

"No."

"C'mon." He wiggled the beef and grinned mischievously. “Eat!”

Kaiba felt that he was being forced into a corner – to interact with Jounouchi – and he resented it. Nevertheless, he stepped forward, took the slice in his teeth and pulled it out of the chopsticks (careful not to touch the chopsticks with his mouth), then stepped back.

Jounouchi cocked his head. "See, That wasn't so bad. Do you want more?"

"No."

"Sure you do." He moved closer, offering another piece.

It was disconcerting to be treated this way by this stranger who was yet-not-quite a stranger. Kaiba decided to poke back. “Sure, give it to me,” he said, knowing full well how suggestive that sounded.

Jounouchi's eyes seemed to glaze over as he placed the second morsel in Kaiba's mouth.

Kaiba almost laughed. Seriously – beef bowl eroticism _?_

Jounouchi held up a third piece. This time, Kaiba closed his mouth deliberately and tightly around the chopsticks, so that Jounouchi was forced to pull them out – which he did, slowly, his face turning pink. He coughed, then hurriedly scooped the last of the rice into his mouth. "Done. Thanks." He turned to the small sink and rinsed the bowl with hot water, scrubbing it out with his fingers.

"Those are meant to be thrown away," Kaiba said, puzzled.

"Ah, a habit I guess. My dad's a slob, so I do all the washing up. And I save all the plastic dishes, since we don't buy real dishes."

"And you don't buy real dishes because – ?"

"They break when you throw 'em." Jounouchi replied, bending down to look under the sink so that his hair hid his face. He straightened up, a paper towel in his hand, and said as he saw the expression on Kaiba's face. "Well, dishes get thrown sometimes, right?" He dried the bowl, then rinsed and dried the chopsticks, setting them on the counter next to the plastic bowl. "Hey, it's better if you turn it on."

"What?"

"The stove." Jounouchi pointed. "Or don't Italians need hot water with a fancy pot like that?"

The assembled espresso maker was on the stove but the burner was not lit.

"Hn." Kaiba started the coffee. He resisted the urge to tightly re-wrap and re-tie his robe as he moved away from the stove, instead folding his arms and crossing one ankle over the other.

"How does that work, exactly?"

"What?"

"The coffee pot."

"Steam in the bottom half – "

"Heat and pressure in the bottom, right." Jounouchi, leaning sideways next to the sink, repeated Kaiba's words with a gleam in his eye.

Yeah, he got it. Innuendo. " – goes up the stem of the _imbouto_ , through the grounds, and the espresso comes out of the pipe in the upper pot. When it stops sputtering it's done."

"Well, that's cool," Jounouchi said with false enthusiasm.

Kaiba picked up his book to prevent another round of the eye game – and to prevent himself from looking again at the intriguing bulge in his guest's faded jeans. The thick silence was mercifully filled by the gradually rising rumble of the water heating in the espresso pot.

_Why is he here, wasting my time?_

Suddenly Jounouchi put his hand out, pushing up the book to read the cover. " _Bushido_ , huh? I always wanted to learn more about it. Are you reading for a school project?"

In the past Kaiba would have replied with something like, "Why look at something that's beyond you? A book on dog-grooming would be more beneficial," but instead he found himself saying, "Product research."

"Something new, huh?" Jounouchi said quietly. "Tell me what ya like." He added, "about the subject?"

"There was more respect for warriors then," Kaiba said loftily, "and for virtues that have disappeared from modern society – honor, loyalty, testing your power against a worthy opponent." As he said this Miss Poole's voice echoed in his head, and he paused.

.

 _There are many types of warriors. Some fight men._  
Some fight dark ideas. Some fight both. And some of the  
fiercest battles are fought in the soul, against one's self …

_._

"Weren't those guys supposed to study art and music and poetry and stuff as well as sword-fighting and archery?" Jounouchi said as Kaiba's silence continued.

"Yes," he said, coming back to himself, surprised. "So you know something about this?"

"Yeah, just a little." Jounouchi dipped his head and rubbed the back of his neck. "Ah, I did a little bit of reading a while ago after Mai and I had a discussion about _shuda_ and _nanshoku_ and," he exhaled, "you know, samurai history, manly love, _Tale of Genji_. Stuff like that."

Kaiba raised an eyebrow. Manly love?

The coffeepot gurgled and hissed. Kaiba put the book down and moved to the stove. "So, how do you like it?" he asked.

"What?"

"Your espresso." Kaiba, his back to Jounouchi, smirked. _No, your manly love._ "Cream, sugar, steamed milk?"

"Sugar. I like it strong and sweet. Something that'll keep me up all night."

The clock ticked very loudly in the moments that followed.

Kaiba poured a small cup of the foamy, pungent espresso and put it and some sugar sticks next to Jounouchi. "It's strong."

Jounouchi blew on the cup, then took a small sip. "Ah, hot!" He stuck his tongue out. "But good." Then he picked up the sugar stick, stirred the espresso, and licked and sucked the dark foam from it until he noticed Kaiba's stare. He started to grin, then dropped his eyes and pointed to the book. "So, anyhow, you're really getting into it. Is that why you're wearing a _yukata_ while you read? To get the spirit?"

"Perhaps." Kaiba gave a small shrug. "It's more comfortable than the traditional armor."

Jounouchi looked him up and down. "Well, it looks – Hey, did you just make a _joke_?"

"Do you always blurt out everything that comes into your head?"

"Not everything ... and anyhow, why shouldn't I say what I'm thinking? What else should I do? Lie?"

"Hn." _He can't be serious. He says what he's thinking? What's the advantage in that?_

"Like right now," Jounouchi started, then swallowed before he said, "if you asked me what I was thinking, I'd have to tell you that I'm wondering if you're wearing anything under that robe." He was defiant and slightly flushed.

Kaiba was startled, but quickly recovered. Millie had said that flirting was like chess. Fine. Mirroring your opponent's opening was sometimes a useful strategy. If nothing else, it might yield more empirical data for Tantalus. "So find out."

Jounouchi set down the sugar stick, then stepped in front of him and reached for the _yukata's_ belt.

Kaiba quickly grabbed his wrists and held them out to each side. "Ah ah ah, no no, that's much too easy."

"Nothing wrong with being easy," Jounouchi said, "but hard is good too." The wolf face had appeared.

Shaking free of Kaiba's grip with a sudden snap, he stepped closer. He put his fingertips on the brunet's thighs then slid them up slowly, lightly, obviously feeling for garments under the thin cotton. He locked his gaze with Kaiba's. "Well, no boxers or panty lines," he murmured, investigating higher. "So, unless you're _naked_ ," he paused, his breath now coming through parted lips, "maybe it's the sexy underwear Mai bought you for her party.” His fingertips paused, slid around into the hollows of Kaiba's hips, drew small circles. "Or maybe your tighty-whities are just all in a bunch as usual?"

Kaiba couldn't remember later who moved first – one minute they were apart, the next they weren't ... It was not as magical as the night at Mai's had been. Their bodies didn't flow together like they had that night; their mouths seemed the wrong shape, the kisses were sloppy, one or the other kept opening their mouth too far and their teeth kept clicking together. Jounouchi tasted strongly of gritty wasabi and beef, his hair today reeked of cigarette smoke, and he was mashing Kaiba against the cabinets so ardently that various handles dug painfully into his back and neck ...

Yet despite all this, Kaiba didn't want it to stop. And it wasn't just data: not when, once again, being held and kissed made him feel as though he had changed from a wisp of smoke to something solid. When they paused for air, resting their foreheads together and brushing noses, Jounouchi pushed a knee questingly against Kaiba's. Caution battled with curiosity: curiosity won. He moved his legs apart and Jounouchi pulled him close, far enough away from the counter so that he could straddle Kaiba's thigh and wrap his arms around him. They molded tight as they kissed again, pulsing against each other. Kaiba was mostly immobilized by the embrace, but he was able to reach around, pull up the back of Jounouchi's shirt, and put his hands on the hot, slightly sweaty skin.

 _No one knows_ _I'm here except Mokuba. No one knows Jounouchi_ 's _here except me._ _So, theoretically, we could do this for as long as we wanted._ A nervous quiver ran through him and settled in his stomach as he felt the blond's arousal pressing against him.

Jounouchi broke the kiss and pulled Kaiba's robe partly down one shoulder. He rubbed the side of his face against the skin, traced his lips along the jutting collarbone, then his tongue. Kaiba tilted his head back as Jounouchi kissed his throat.

"So?" Jounouchi asked hoarsely.

"What?" He could barely breathe. Why was the kitchen so bright?

Jounouchi gave the belt a tug, loosening it. "So," he said, "I kinda hope you want to pick up where we left off the other night." He rolled his hips. "And aren't just leading me on."

A flashfire swept over Kaiba's body, temporarily overtaking his mounting apprehension … In chess, if your opponent started to box you in, a bold move sometimes was the way to escape the trap and regain control.

"Leading you on? How stupid." He brought his arms up to break Jounouchi's embrace, grabbed the blond's face, and forced him to back up to the cabinets opposite. Jounouchi offered no resistance. Kaiba turned his head to the side, outlined the blond's ear with the tip of his tongue, then sucked on the lobe until Jounouchi moaned. _I see – he did it to me because he likes having it done to him. Interesting._ Continuing his attack, Kaiba kissed him hard, sucking the tongue into his mouth, then rubbing and circling it with his own until he felt the blond's body tremble. It was enjoyable, this power of having someone respond so intensely _._

Small fish reel in so easily.

He felt better now that he had the upper hand, more confident, and so broke the kiss to slide a hand down inside the back of the baggy jeans and into the loose boxers, rubbing and squeezing the firm ass. He grinned as Jounouchi gasped and squirmed and arched against him.

And then Jounouchi bought his arm around to stroke him through the thin robe. After a moment, he whispered, "So you're okay with this?" and, taking silence as assent, slid his hand inside the robe and took hold of Kaiba gently, his thumb and fingertips lightly caressing.

Kaiba stood shock-still staring at the blurred wall of cabinets as the kitchen caved in on him.

No, Millie had been wrong. Disastrously wrong. Sex was not like chess at all. If you underestimated your opponent in chess you lost. If you underestimated your opponent in sex you were going to be overwhelmed and invaded. He knew now that he was finally feeling what had been unable to feel when he was in Pegasus's kitchen: shame as his body responded to being fondled, fear of the approaching humiliation and pain, panic as he began to drown in a surging terror that shrieked at him to run far away and hide beneath layers and layers of clothes and blankets where no one could find him.

_._

_"He's my friend. He wouldn't do those things."_

_._

And then, as always at his lowest moments, that sardonic voice floated up from a shadowed corner of his soul: _Oh, silly silly Kaiba boy ... Stop being such a baby. Grit your teeth and take advantage of this rare opportunity. I mean, look at him_ – _he actually wants to screw you! And he probably won't hurt you – unless he finds out you got him all worked up for nothing … Aw, you're going soft. Guess you'll be bottoming. As usual._

His turmoil was interrupted by Jounouchi, who took his hand away from Kaiba quickly, as if burned. "Are you not okay with this? Or am I doing something wrong?"

Why was this mediocrity so concerned about him? Kaiba could accept when people attacked and plotted against him; but when people were kind – he couldn't bear how trapped and frantic it made him feel. He would almost rather be raped again: at least that he already knew he could withstand.

_Stick with what you know, Kaiba-boy._

Hm … for once, the Phantom was right; what he needed now were familiar weapons. Anger and attack. "So I guess you're ready to experiment some more?" he said sharply.

"What? Experiment, what do you mean?" Jounouchi backed away. It was almost comical, how he recoiled from Kaiba's sudden anger.

"I'm surprised though, that you picked _me_ for it in the first place. I would have thought your friend Honda a more convenient subject – though, I suppose he'd want to be the dominant one. Yugi seems docile, though – did he turn you down?"

Jounouchi's face clouded. "What the hell are you talking about? Honda, Yugi – turn down _what_?"

"It makes me laugh, Jounouchi, how you think you have me so dazzled by one night's groping that I'll let you in anytime to hump my leg."

" _What_?""

"And how handy you have such a cooperative girlfriend. Or was it all for her benefit? Was she pleased with the show?"

"What? What girlfriend? Who? What benefit? Show?" Jounouchi sounded genuinely puzzled.

"Mai."

"Oh, _Mai_. Nah, Mai's just a friend. What does that have to do with – ?"

"A friend? Do you have sex with all your friends?"

"I'm not gonna put my fist in your face for that remark," Jounouchi said slowly, his voice low and ominous, "but for your information – wait, it's none of your business!" Jounouchi pulled at his hair in frustration, muttering, "Why is this is getting all fucked up?” He turned back suddenly. " Kaiba! Are you pretending to be stupid? Don't you know why I'm here?"

Kaiba asked snidely, "Which question should I answer first?"

Jounouchi stared at him for a minute. "Man, I hate this hot and cold shit." He shook his head. "Mai isn't – she gives me advice, is all."

"So she knows what's best for everyone?"

"Well, you wouldn't know, wouldja?" Jounouchi glared. "Since you never took her up all the times she tried to do something to help you get over what happened – "

"I thought she was just hitting on me." He added coldly, "What do you mean, _what happened_?"

Jounouchi gaped at him, then said carefully, "At Duelist Kingdom? What Pegasus did to you?"

White-hot rage. For a moment he was filled with the need to knock Jounouchi down and pound his mouth into a bloody toothless pulp to ensure that he could never, ever, speak of this again. But of course Kaiba liked to think of himself as a civilized being, and so he stood still and only said savagely, “She doesn't know the _first_ thing about what happened to me. Neither do you.”

"How could we?" Jounouchi shot back. "You're always running away!"

"Her party," Kaiba said flatly.

"That woulda been a good way to – "

"Fuck with the rich boy? Get off if he'll cooperate, and if not there's always the fallback benefit of blackmail. I'm curious: how many people has Mai told about my special Duelist Kingdom experience? Other than you?"

Jounouchi shook his head. "Mai? She didn't tell me. I figured it out on my own." At Kaiba's skeptical look he added hotly, "Yeah, me, Jounouchi the Loser Dog. I figured out what Pegasus did to you, that he – I figured it out. But I haven't told anyone else, not even Yugi. Neither has Mai. We only talk to each other about it sometimes, about what you're probably going through."

"And just what do you and Mai think I'm going through?"

"She said that a lot of women either start jumping everyone in sight or just freak out if anyone touches them, but that as a guy your reaction could be different." He looked down at the floor.

Kaiba snorted. "And yet she forced me to wear fuck-me clothes at her party? Brilliant."

Jounouchi looked up angrily, pressed his lips together for a few seconds, then said with deliberate, forced calm, "Okay, so maybe the costume was a mistake. Maybe kissing you was too. All I know is, all we've been trying to do is help you get through this."

"Why?"

"Because no one should have to deal with shit like you went through alone. No one."

"How touching. Everyone's trying to heal me. Anything else you and Mai and Yugi and all your cheerleaders think is good for me?"

"Maybe," Jounouchi snarled, apparently losing the last of his patience, "maybe if you'd let someone get close to you you'd have a friend you could lean on, talk to, who'd be there for you whenever – "

"And you're thinking this _friend_ ought to be, who, _you_?" he asked acidly.

"Yes!" Jounouchi shouted, his face livid, his mouth twisted. "Why _not_?" His eyes glittered.

Kaiba was thunderstruck and horrified all at once. "You really think y _ou_ – ?" He started laughing and wasn't able to stop until he was out of breath.

Jounouchi snatched his cup and poured the rest of the espresso into the sink, muttering. "I ought to have my goddamn fucking _head_ examined, thinking I'd get _anywhere_ with you by being honest." He turned. "You think all this isn't scary for me?"

"What 'all this' are you talking about?" Kaiba shot back, the laughter gone. "I've seen how you are with Mai. You're not gay, so it was obvious to me that what you did on the balcony was an act. Playing around, or settling a bet, or groundwork for blackmail."

Turning back to the sink, Jounouchi began rinsing the cup, furiously scrubbing it over and over. "Yeah, right, it was all an act. A big fucking _act_." He stopped and swiped his sleeve across his face. "News flash, asshole, I don't actually – oh forget it!" His head down, his words continued to tumble out. "You know ... not everyone is out to get you. That night ... " He shook his head. "You do all this stuff, but as soon as I go along with it you start saying all this shit, attacking me, attacking my friends. If anyone's getting jacked around here it's _me_." He crumpled the paper towel into a ball. "I'm done trying to get through to you," he continued hoarsely. "I keep forgetting how fucking stupid it is to try to be around someone who treats all lesser mortals like dog shit. I gotta go." He grabbed his jacket and rushed out of the kitchen.

He was fumbling with the knots on his shoes when Kaiba reached him.

"So – you're serious? You're actually _attracted_ to me?"

Jounouchi shook him off. "Whatever. Fuck you, Kaiba. _Fuck_ _you_ ," he spat. "I shoulda known better than to come here. I coulda saved myself getting kicked in the nuts." He grabbed his shoes, opened the door, and stepped outside in his stocking feet. "Forget I was ever here. Sorry I interrupted yer reading."

Kaiba realized that he finally knew exactly what Jounouchi's intentions and feelings were – and that that shouldn't be wasted. As he watched the green jacket retreat, he knew that if he let Jounouchi leave, his absence wouldn't just count as zero, but as – a negative number. Kaiba might never feel solid again, ever.

Then too, it was a matter of pride. No one walked away from Seto Kaiba before he was done talking. "Jounouchi!" Kaiba followed him. "We can't discuss this outside."

"Ain't nothing more to discuss," Jounouchi said, almost at the gate now. "You thought what happened the other night was a joke. I didn't. Now I know better. So you won again, Kaiba. You put me in my place, like you always do."

"Don't be an idiot. You don't understand what – "

Jounouchi spun around quickly, but fortunately the high wild hook connected with Kaiba's shoulder instead of his jaw. " _I don't understand, I don't understand!_ So you gotta rub in that I'm stupid too?" A swift solid jab connected with Kaiba's solar plexus.

Winded, he backed up as Jounouchi advanced. The blond punched in a rage, his shoes still in his other hand.

"Why stop there? Make fun of me being poor while you're at it. Oh, and funny-looking – you left out funny-looking, don't forget funny-looking!"

They were almost to the doorway. Kaiba ducked low, yanked the shoes out of Jounouchi's hand, and tossed them behind him into the foyer. Now he had to come back inside.

Jounouchi stopped, glared at him a moment, said, "Fine," then turned and walked away in his stocking feet again.

"Your feet will be shredded without shoes."

"So what? Then they'll match everything else I got."

Kaiba set his jaw, ran swiftly and noiselessly up behind him, and lifted the slightly shorter teen off his feet to carry him back into the house. Jounouchi, his arms trapped at his sides, cursed incoherently and kicked at Kaiba's legs.

Just as they went through the doorway Jounouchi slammed his head back into Kaiba's. His nose and mouth blooming in pain, Kaiba fell back against the lintel, then lost his balance completely.

They crashed sideways into the house, landing heavily on the cold floor of the foyer. Kaiba did not let go, however: he clamped his legs around Jounouchi's with in a burst of furious strength. "We're not done!" He could feel blood trickling from his lip, split in the fall.

"Yes we are! Let me go!" Jounouchi thrashed and bucked. "You fucking asshole! What are ya doing? I can't _breathe_ , damnit!"

After a few moments Jounouchi stopped struggling, and Kaiba eased up a bit: but as soon as he did, Jounouchi twisted free and to the side, scrambling to his feet.

"What the hell – ?" The blond was staring down at him.

Kaiba realized with a start that his belt had come undone and his robe was open, the mottled bruises and scabbed over raw skin on his thighs in plain view.

"What the hell is all _that_?" Jounouchi demanded. “All that on your legs?”

Kaiba got to his feet sullenly, re-tying his robe, turning away as Jounouchi moved around to try to look him in the face.

"Kaiba!"

Silence.

"Did Pegasus do that? Oh man, I knew he was a sick bastard! He tortured you too?"

Kaiba finally looked at Jounouchi.

"Shit!" Jounouchi burst out, punching the wall, "I wanna kill that freak! No wonder you're so pissed at everyone! Man, I'm so sor – "

"Great, just fucking great," Kaiba snarled, and strode away.

"What the hell?" Jounouchi muttered then went after him. He saw him step into the stairwell in the floor and grabbed his shoulder. "What are ya running away for?"

Kaiba whirled around, snapping his shoulder away. "Fuck off! I don't want pity!"

"People'd understand you better if they knew the shit you've been through. They'd cut you slack!"

"I don't care if anyone understands me or cuts me slack. People should mind their own business and leave me alone." He started down the stairs.

"Really? Alone? Is that what you really want, to be alone?" Jounouchi shouted down at him. "Just you and your brother? And what ya gonna do when Mokuba grows up, falls in love with someone, goes off to live his own life? Cause he will, ya know. He's a helluva lot more normal than you! What, so then you'll finally be happy, 'cause you'll be all by yourself? Is that what you really want? To be alone? Shit, I didn't realize you grabbing my ass was Kaiba sign language for 'Go Away'!"

Kaiba stopped descending. "What do you expect from me, Jounouchi? Flowers and chocolate and candlelight dinners?"

"Don't be stupid," Jounouchi retorted, irritated. "All any of us want is that you'd start noticing that we try to treat you like a human being, and return the favor once in a while."

"Why? So we can all be _friends?"_

Jounouchi descended a step. "And would that be such a bad thing? Seems to me like you could use at least _one_."

Kaiba looked away.

"You know what you're like, Kaiba? A geode rock. On the outside you're all asshole. But believe it or not, some of us still think that you _might_ not be asshole all the way through."

“Plan on cutting me in half to find out?"

"The thought has occurred to me," Jounouchi said. "More than once."

Although Kaiba assumed it would be misinterpreted, it seemed like he should risk offering an acknowledgment, some civil comment. He turned and pointed at Jounouchi's knuckles, torn from punching the wall. "Your hand's bleeding." He was becoming uneasy; the itch to retreat to familiar ground, to attack, was coming back.

Jounouchi sniffed, “I'll take care of it later.” He descended one more one step, so that his brown eyes were level with blue. "Candlelight dinners, eh? Who knew you were the type?" He reached out, wiped the blood from Kaiba's lip with his thumb. "For the record, I've never been into anyone who wasn't into me. Just thought I'd mention that." He turned and ran up the steps and around the corner.

A few seconds later came the sound of the door opening, and then it slammed, and Kaiba was alone.

.

_~ to be continued ~_

_._

For the record, reviews make my day.

 

(125) 22 April 2014 - fixed some oopsies.


	6. Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After seven years, a new chapter!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

 

Deep in thought, he stared unseeing as his computer screen scrolled line-by-line status of the current compile. In his restless hands the dragon _netsuke_ chased its tail.

.

Jounouchi's visit and the events that transpired had been surprisingly unsettling while occurring, but he didn't want to be thrown off balance like that again. If he could sort and analyze his thoughts and reactions he could mentally file away a course of action should there be a second visit. That was what Gozaburo Kaiba had taught him: doubt and fear were weakness, and the moment one admitted weakness, defeat was inevitable (as Gozaburo's own death had proved).

Not that there was anything unknown or overpowering about the idea of a relationship: after all, he knew what was involved, he'd done the research and the qualitative analysis on that weeks ago, when he'd weighed the advantages of virtual vs. real lovers. There was certainly no point in re-visiting the conclusions he'd made at that time: the benefit to someone of his intelligence of a real world relationship – even a non-sexual "friendship" – was unlikely to be worth the investment of time and energy it would require, and therefore was not worth further consideration. Although he could admit a residual interest – a _very_ small interest – in Jounouchi's comment, "I've never been into anyone who wasn't into me." If it had been meant as an admission of mutual attraction, it might have been acceptable, but it was more likely to be an overblown statement about the power of his supposed sex appeal. The blond probably thought that Seto found him irresistible.

"It's a mistake to be so egotistical, Jounouchi," Seto muttered, tapping a few keys to open the next file directory.

Right there – why did he keep circling, like a dizzy moth, around and around a meaningless comment? Really, it was the perfect example of the irrationality and disorder that had disrupted his normal life since the day he'd walked into the Kame Game shop. Before that day, his life had had an elegant simplicity: running the company, dueling, taking care of Mokuba – he had done it all with ease. Kaiba Corporation had been his castle, and high atop it he and Mokuba were secure and content.

It would have stayed that way, after defeating Yugi's grandfather and destroying the fourth Blue Eyes card, if he had declined the duel that followed – after all, there had been no reason to think that Yugi was anything but a mediocre duelist. He had broken his own rule – that of never accepting challenges from those he considered lesser duelists – and he had paid for it ever since. His defeat and the subsequent Mind Crush – inflicted by that personality he'd come to think of as Yugi's Dark Half – had inexplicably drained him of everything that had made him successful as a duelist, as a company president, and as Mokuba's protector. Not only had dueling become a private hell, but news of the defeat by an unknown made him look so weak publicly that his company became the target of takeover attempts he hadn't foreseen. Then Pegasus had taken Mokuba from him, which had led to another defeat at Duelist Kingdom, which had led to – .

He clenched the _netsuke_ in his fist.

And as if all that wasn't enough, who had been there at every turn, taking advantage of every moment of weakness to worm into his world? _Mutou and his groupies._ Constantly pushing in at him under a banner of "friendship." Making unexpected demands on his energy, distracting him, pulling off course. Well, he wasn't going to fall for it. How naive did they think he was, tossing around "we" as if they thought of him as part of their little circle? Talking about geodes and honesty and respect.

As if that meant anything.

_And sitting here seething is so useful. Those that can't do, rage impotently._

Fine. He'd do something physical instead of spinning his wheels. Test the Sword Master Training area he'd had Millie set up within Tantalus. He pushed himself to his feet, set the _netsuke_ atop the monitor, and left a note for Mokuba.

.

Instead of walking south, toward Ryuken's area, he went north. The forest thinned out and gave way to small bushes and scrub as the land rose into rocky foothills. He found the narrow path up the east side of the mountain and climbed quickly, the shaded mountainside still chilly with night air.

After several switchbacks the path ended at a flat area in front of a large cave. To the right of the cave mouth a waterfall bounced away and out of sight. "Initiate _kenjutsu_ program," he said, kneeling. A wooden sword materialized in front of him, while the shadows of the cave entrance resolved into a solid form. He saw the flash of a sword in one hand and the coils of a rope in the other as the squat figure emerged from the cave.

Seto smiled. Millie had given the teacher the form of Fudou Myouou the Immoveable, one of the five Kings of Light? The AI just kept progressing.

"Master," he said, bowing until his forehead touched the ground, "I seek training."

"Indeed." The hologram's voice was perfect, a gruff rasp over a deep baritone that suggested vast patience and wisdom. "My blade cuts though delusion and ignorance. My lariat binds the demons of uncontrolled emotions. Which service may I perform for you?"

Seto sighed. He'd have to explain to Millie that he'd wanted a _kenjutsu_ master, not a therapist, but for now he supposed he might as well see where the program would lead. "Neither. I have come to learn the way of the sword."

Fudou Myouou laughed, a deep belly rumble. "Oh ho! So you are free then of anger, fear, and doubt? Come with me then, and undergo a test before we begin. If you pass I will teach you. If you do not pass I will not."

"Very well." Seto stood and followed him into the cave.

As they entered the roughly circular cavern the Master set his sword and rope down next to a large basket containing small red lotus blossoms. "You must pass the child's version of the test before I offer you the choice to undergo the man's version."

"If you insist," Kaiba said. "Wouldn't it save time if we skipped that and just went directly to the man's version?"

"We will see," the Master said with a smile. "Stand over there and say when you are ready to begin."

With a smirk Kaiba went to the center of the cavern. "I'm ready."

The Master picked up the basket of flowers and stood in front of him, then lifted a flower and with a flick of his wrist tossed it at Seto's chest.

To his annoyance he flinched.

The Master smiled and tossed another, beginning to walk slowly and noiselessly to the right.

Kaiba forced himself to stand still and stare straight ahead as the old man went out of his line of sight. A moment later he felt one of the flowers hit his hand.

He was definitely going to have to check Millie's logic circuits.

There was a soft impact between his shoulder blades, like the faintest breeze against his back. "What is this?" he demanded as Fudou Myouou came back into the line of sight to his left.

"It is the test. Do you want me to stop?"

"Do I fail the test if I ask you to stop?"

"Yes."

"Then don't stop."

The flowers continued to pelt him, and irritation slowly built into anger. He clenched his fists but was determined to keep silent. It was a ridiculous test, and he felt illogically demeaned by it, but he wasn't going to be beaten by something so stupid.

Flowers brushed his cheek, the back of his neck.

"Do you want me to stop?"

"No!" he said sharply. He looked forward to the _kendo_ lesson that would follow – swinging that wooden sword was going to be very satisfying.

The featherlight blows came faster now, chest, hip, back, legs. He couldn't understand the apprehension he felt, as if he was in danger: these were only flowers, after all, holographic flowers at that, but the calm reasoning part of his brain was having no impact on the rest of him. It became more and more difficult not to cringe in anticipation of the next attack. His heart began to pound, a burning sensation sparked and flared just behind his balls, his muscles tensed with the urge to lash out or flee and in his mind's eye he saw five shadowy men in suits reaching for him while behind them Pegasus stood smiling and sipping wine …

And no one was going to help him. He fell to his hands and knees in the virtual cave with a cry of shame.

A scratching noise. Dusty sandals came into sight in front of him, and there was a rustle of rags as the Wisdom King squatted down. "You are not ready to learn the sword yet, Kaiba Seto. You are burdened with anger and fear. Return to me with strength and courage once you have found your true warrior's soul."

Seto looked up at the ugly, compassionate face and nodded. "End program," he said.

.

"Big brother? Are you okay?"

As the pod's hood lifted he saw Mokuba standing next to him with a piece of paper in his hand. He looked pale and stressed.

Seto forced a smile he didn't feel. "What do you have?" He wondered how long Mokuba had been there, what he'd seen.

Mokuba handed him the paper. It was a drawing. At the top of a tall castle tower, a Blue Eyes poked its head morosely out of a single barred window. At the base of the tower, a woman with long dark hair was fighting fanged horses. Seto flashed back to another time, years ago, when another drawing of Mokuba's had come to him and helped him though another dark, poisonous time. "What is this?"

"A princess is trying to rescue the dragon," Mokuba said somberly. "But she has to kill the vampire horses first. After that she can kiss it so can turn into a prince and they can live happily ever after."

Seto rubbed his forehead. "How is she going to get up to where the dragon is? Is there a door? Or stairs?"

Mokuba sighed, exasperated. "Don't get distracted by details, big brother. It's a fairy tale, you know. They _never_ make sense."

"Does," he thought for a minute, "does this dragon-prince have any family?" He assumed that he was the dragon, but that might mean that Mokuba was identifying himself with a princess again: was he going to have to read up on how to handle cross-dressing?

"I dunno," Mokuba said thoughtfully. "Hm, maybe." He scrunched up his face, then said cheerfully, "Yeah, his brother was kidnapped by the guy who owns the vampire horses. And if the Dragon Prince doesn't come up with the ransom soon, it'll be all over for the prince's brother." He made a dramatic throat-cutting gesture, complete with gurgling noises.

"So the princess isn't related to the dragon?"

"No," Mokuba said a snort. "She has to kiss him and marry him. That would be weird if she was his sister."

"I see. Isn't she going to need help from a knight?"

Mokuba snatched the picture from his hands. "No, that wouldn't work. Knights _kill_ dragons. Princesses kiss them."

"Calm down." Placating, he asked, "You wanted me to do something?"

"I thought we could hang out, watch TV, something like that." He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. "If you're done in here."

"I am." He was done, all right.

"But there's something else I want you to do first," Mokuba said, "right now."

"What's that?"

Mokuba folded his arms. "Take a shower and put on clean clothes. You stink!"

.

The younger Kaiba had had a knack for mischief at times. "Hey, what's this?" His voice was muffled. "This big package from Italy?"

Seto unlocked the bathroom door and opened it a crack. S _hit._ He must mean the box from Milan tossed in the back of the closet. "I don't remember," he lied, quickly pulling on a black turtleneck and pants.

He heard Mokuba clapping and hooting. " _Wow_ , Seto! when did you get this stuff? And why is it still in the box?"

"I'll never wear it," he said as he came out of the bathroom, slipping the locket over his head and tossing his pajamas in the laundry chute. The turtleneck sleeves were long, but not as long as he'd have liked. Keeping the scars on his wrist covered until they healed was essential.

Mokuba, unwrapping a tissue-wrapped cylinder, whistled. "Not even _this_? It's _awesome_!" He held up a long metal wrist-cuff.

"I didn't notice that before." Curious, Seto took it and read the small tag attached. "Museum reproduction. Interesting." He glanced at the instructions, then released the concealed clasp. The cuff opened along a nearly invisible hinge. He snapped it shut around his left forearm. It was solid, heavy enough to hold his sleeve in place, and with the fabric underneath it didn't slide at all. Snug but not too tight. It was like armor.

Wearing it might be acceptable.

"Here's the other one." Mokuba asked as he fitted it around Seto's right forearm, "Do they have these in _my_ size?"

"Ask Millie," Seto said, swinging his arms. Like using a well-balanced weapon, the cuffs made his motions feel significant. He smiled a little.

And then he caught sight of himself in the mirror. He started to take the cuffs off.

"What are you doing?" Mokuba squawked.

"I look like a fool."

Mokuba jumped to his feet and snapped the cuff shut. "No you don't!" He sounded urgent, almost desperate. "You – you – look like a prince! Or a superhero."

_Superhero? How long would Mokuba look up to me if he knew my secret identity's secret?_

The gray eyes shone. "Please, just for today? After that you can put them away."

 _I have to get myself straightened out so that I can stop putting him through this._ He put his hand tenderly on Mokuba's head and stroked the thick black hair a few times. "Okay, just for today."

"And this too?" Mokuba dashed over to the box and held up the heavy brocade coat with the massive curved shoulders.

Seto shook his head. "Absolutely not."

"Why not?"

"If I wore that in public, I'd be laughed off the streets."

"The house isn't public!" Mokuba smiled his widest smile and added Big Eyes."Pleeeease? it's awesome!"

Feeling generous, he reached for the purple monstrosity. The sleeves, form-fitting below the elbow, had concealed zippers. "Mokuba," he said doubtfully, "There's no way this will go on over … "

Mokuba looked at him, arms akimbo. "Put the arm things on _top_."

"It's stupid-looking," he muttered as he put the cuffs on over the coat sleeves.

"It's cool-looking," Mokuba said as he wadded the tissue paper into a ball and happily shot it into the wastebasket.

.

He had to admit, the coat was well made, with a pleasing weight and swing. It still seemed too dramatic to wear even in the house, but Mokuba kept looking at him and grinning, dancing around him and clapping and calling him "Your Highness" as they went up to the third-floor home office to watch anime.

"Only this once," he grumbled.

Instead of the super-robot or martial arts series that Mokuba had favored in the past today's show had girls, lingerie, and breast jokes. The plot seemed to be that a high school club, run by a nerd in glasses with four girls as members, used magic to fight alien robots. The club president spent half of each episode with nosebleeds as a result of his sexual fantasies about the other members, only one of which (a tall, flat-chested tomboy with red hair) had any intelligence.

"So what do you think? Do you like it?" Mokuba asked, a gleam in his eye.

"Magic is pointless. They should be using science and guns to fight the aliens," he said, folding his arms, "and the club president should be content with the redhead and leave the other girls alone."

Mokuba looked at him steadily, a lopsided grin growing. "If you're going to pretend to watch something with me, you really ought to pay a _little_ bit of attention. That's a _boy_ who keeps trying to kiss Takakura."

"The one with the long red hair is a boy?"

"Yeah," Mokuba giggled. "It's funny."

Seto harrumphed. "Why are you watching this garbage?"

"It has cute girls." Mokuba said matter-of-factly. "Which one do you like best?"

"None of them. They're cartoons."

"But if they were real people, which would you go out with?"

Seto shook his head. "I don't associate with the brainless." He had overheard and seen enough at school to last a lifetime. Take the Valentine's Day nonsense: girls he'd never met – and had no interest in – pummeling each other over the "right" to put unwanted chocolate in his locker. Almost laughable that they spent so much energy on something that was never going to get them anywhere.

"You mean, just _quit_ the Magic Club?" one of the anime girls asked the other.

Seto nodded. The shower had cleared his head. He was going to re-focus his energy on what mattered: Regaining his title. Rebuilding his company. Making up to Mokuba for the events of the past few months. Anything that didn't contribute to those three things was of no use to him.

It was possible, after he reached his goals, that he might decide to squander the time and resources for other experiences – like passing Fudou Myouou's fucking flower attack test.

He got up from the couch and went to his desk.

"Should I play another episode?" Mokuba asked.

"Your choice. I have work to do." He opened his laptop, began scanning his e-mail.

Mokuba changed the channel. A news announcer was saying "- the Director of the Bureau of Egyptology in Egypt, and the foremost scholar in the research of Egyptology."

He glanced at the screen. Surprising – that woman was a scholar and a museum director? The museum must be very small.

"Oh, look. It's a new exhibition! Can we go?"

"No. I'm not interested in archeology – and if I was, I'd do my own research rather than look at someone else's broken pottery."

Mokuba pouted. "I think it's interesting. I've never seen Egyptian stuff before." A wheedling tone. "Maybe it will give you a game idea."

"Doubtful." The phone rang, on the line that forwarded calls from the corporation office. Who in hell was calling on a Sunday? "What is it?"

"Sir, Miss Ishizu Ishtar of the Bureau of Archaeology is on the line for you."

He watched the woman on the screen invite the public to the museum while the voice on the phone offered him a personal invitation.

"I'll be there in twenty minutes," he said, then hung up the phone, pressed the intercom, and asked for a driver.

"Where are you going?" Mokuba asked.

"To the museum. That woman says she has a rare card for me. It's probably a trick to get me to make a donation."

"Miss Ishtar? Wow, Seto! She looks like a princess! Maybe you should ask her out."

He frowned at Mokuba, closed the laptop, and stood. "It's business."

As he reached for his briefcase he realized that he was wearing the ridiculous coat. Well, no time to change – and no matter. He was just going for the card: he didn't care what a stranger he'd never see again thought of his outfit.

.

~ : ~

.

The streets of Domino were deserted under the night sky when Kaiba finally left the museum. It felt as though he was the only person in the city.

Possibly the most useful lesson Gozaburo had taught him was how to factor out the superficial when evaluating an opponent. Seto had found this especially useful in dealing with women. In his experience, although many pretended to be shallow or under the thrall of irrational ideas – perfumed cards, Yijing hexagrams, pharaohs and reincarnation – behind the sparkly haze there was occasionally above-average intelligence or sharp business sense.

Ishizu Ishtar was clearly one such. It was clear from her initial call that she'd done due diligence on his history as a duelist. Some people might have seen her little ancient Egypt stage show as an annoying distraction, but he saw it as her way of letting him know that she had access to a mobile emitter that was was decades ahead of anything KaibaCorp had yet developed. Full sensory immersion without a pod? – clearly she had a pocket genius hidden away. If she was smart, he'd expect her to only offer to license the technology, but he was determined to buy the patent and all rights. If she didn't agree, he'd keep the God Cards and the information on the Ghouls operation hostage until she did.

Not that he was planning to return the cards, of course. Obelisk on its own would ensure victory; if the other cards were even half as powerful, he would be completely unstoppable. The thought of it made him laugh.

Mokuba, fully dressed, was curled up on top of the bedspread in the guest room. He sat up sleepily when Seto switched on the light. "Well?"

"She wants me to host a tournament in order to stop a card counterfeiting operation. Among other things."

"Cool! Did you ask her out?" Mokuba mumbled, rubbing his eyes.

"Stop pushing it, Mokuba." Seto took off the silver cuffs, and then the monstrous purple coat. "Ishizu isn't a princess. She's a businesswoman. We have a business deal. And she's much older than I am." An instant before he tossed the coat into the box he saw a flash of white and red. "What's this?" He picked up a sleeveless white coat lined in red.

"Yeah, there were a lot of other great clothes things in that box," Mokuba said with a yawn. "Try it on."

Seto shrugged. He certainly needed something to replace the purple coat. "All right." The long white duster had the heft of the purple coat without the ridiculous sleeves.

"The label said it was made of sharks." Mokuba slid off the bed like a sleepwalker.

"Sharkskin leather? Interesting." Sharkskin. He liked the way that sounded, and he was pleased enough with the way it looked that when Mokuba made a detour to hand him the silver cuffs, he decided to wear them.

.

Seto had inherited KaibaCorp the day Gozaburo died, but he had taken over the company long before that. In chess, the best players were those who could think strategically – several moves into the future – as well as tactically – anticipating and reacting to the opponent's current move.

From the beginning, Seto had observed how Gozaburo ran the company. The elder Kaiba had installed five of his friends as the ruling board, gave them carte blanche to run their divisions and projects as they wished (as long as they were profitable), and treated all else in the company the way he treated Seto – anything other than meek obedience was punished by immediate dismissal.

In other words, he ruled by fear.

Seto never forgot one particular meeting where, after an entire development team had been fired for suggesting an innovation that would have reduced pollution from manufacturing, a high-level manager had quit in disgust, telling Seto that Gozaburo "was as bad as Tarquin". Seto had later looked this reference up, and found Livy's account of how Tarquinius Superbus, the tyrannical seventh king of Rome, had cut off the heads of the tallest poppies in his garden as an allegory for his son, suggesting that the way to maintain control over a recently-conquered enemy city was to execute its leading citizens.

Seto was already determined that KaibaCorp would become a very different company after he was in charge, but this incident gave him a strategy for doing just that. He began a secret, systematic review of every Research and Development employee, first identifying everyone who had designed a component or proposed a project that had been rejected. He then reviewed these "failed" components and projects, classifying each as either Sloppy Work, Out of Scope, Far-fetched or Visionary. He found an interesting trend: most of the work was done by names he saw over and over, and fell into the first two categories. Such people he moved to a separate list, of those who he would fire the day he had the power. The few remaining names seemed to be dependable workers who from time to time had the courage to be a slightly taller poppy – a hypothesis that was validated when he read between the lines of their performance reviews.

The day he inherited the company, he invited these few to a meeting. He first told them the story of Tarquinius and then summarized the "failed" work of each person at the table. When he could see that they all were braced for more of the treatment they had received under Gozaburo, he assured them that, far from firing them, he was willing to encourage their ingenuity with large budgets and flexible hours. In return they would be expected to be on call 24 hours a day, ready to abandon their current projects and begin to work within 30 minutes of his summons and to keep working until whatever task he had set them was done. One year to the day after that meeting, that core group – every one of them having accepted his terms – presented Seto with a gift: A lapel pin communicator in the shape of the company logo. The phones that had access to the pin's encrypted frequency had been discreetly imprinted with a poppy.

Thus it was that a group of sleepy but determined people converged on the KaibaCorp Research and Development department a little after 3 am to find Kaiba already in the R & D lab, striding back and forth impatiently.

He looked up and addressed Jotun, an older man with an impeccably groomed white beard. "My new duel computer. Up to date?"

"Yes, sir. Fully integrated with the new duel disk prototype and the variant rules."

"Good. Load my current deck. I'm testing a card I acquired recently."

"Which card, sir?"

"You won't have data on it." He held it up. "Divine God Soldier of Obelisk. Designed by Maximilian Crawford. Unique."

"Amazing." Jotun's eyes shone as he read the text. " _The descent of this mighty creature shall be heralded by burning winds and twisted land. And with the coming of this horror, those who draw breath shall know the true meaning of eternal slumber._ Congratulations, sir."

"And Jotun," Kaiba smiled, "I have activated the Direct Damage Option. Do not override it."

"Sir," the older man's face clearly showed his disapproval, "I wish to state again my opposition to the DDO. The staff doctor has clearly stated that two or three shocks from those floor panels could stop your heart or cause serious arrhythmia."

"Objection noted. But a duel is worthless if there is nothing at stake. Proceed with the test."

"As you wish, sir."

As Jotun directed the rest of the staff through the preparations for the test duel, Kaiba continued to pace and make notes for the tournament that he would use to trap the Ghouls. _Equipment?_ His new portable system, of course – the tournament would be excellent publicity for it, which would be good for sales. In fact … if he made using his new system mandatory, the chip in each duel disk that uploaded data to the KaibaCorp mainframe would allow each duelist, each duel – each _card_ – to be tracked via satellite. _Venue?_ He didn't have an island, but he did have a city. His PR people would pitch the tourist angle to the city council; perhaps they'd even underwrite some of the costs. He'd have to do something special for the final rounds, something high-profile but isolated enough to keep the rabble out. _Advertising?_ Once he had full production information on the new duel disk, he would have viral marketing spread the word. Faster, cheaper and more targeted than print or media advertising. _Tournament rules?_ He'd have to give some thought to this, but at the very least there had to be an ante rule, with the winner taking the loser's best card. It would ensure that he'd have justification for using force if needed to take the two God cards when he defeated their holders.

The rush he felt as he pictured that future moment – he hadn't felt so energized in months. The tournament would lure the Rare Card Hunters of the Ghouls organization; once he took their God Cards he could duel Yugi again and remove the stain from his – and Kaiba Corporation's – reputation.

He could already taste the victory.

Jotun stepped into his path. "We're ready for you now, sir."

.

 _So this is what Yugi feels when he duels me_ , he thought a few moments later when faced with the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon. He had never seen its awesome power from this angle, never had the three silvery heads dip toward him, bare their fangs and roar. Such power. So beautiful …

(there was something familiar, a déjà vu, as though he had stood like this before, the object of their attack)

(though that was absurd.)

… as if he was dreaming, he could hear Mokuba's voice. "Seto, it's too dangerous! When the Blue Eyes attacks you will take direct damage. Stop the duel!"

It was not important. What he saw instead was Yugi – or rather his Dark – standing between him and the Ultimate Dragon. What emotion did he feel? Dark had never shown fear or hesitation: he had in fact been willing to kill in order to win, would have allowed Kaiba to die at Duelist Kingdom if Mutou Yugi hadn't re-emerged and stopped him.

What was his secret? Was it as he asserted, that he always believed in his cards, completely? Was that the reason he never showed fear?

"I will conquer my fear! The next card I draw will grant me victory!"

Without looking he knew he had drawn Obelisk: he could feel the power surging through his body as he held the card aloft, feel electricity prickling over his skin as he set the card and sacrificed the tribute.

"Take the others!" he shouted. "Use your ultimate attack!" There was a sharp smell of ozone as Obelisk crushed the remaining monsters and his power expanded, beyond the room, filling the building, growing without limit. Seto felt a sudden pang of regret. "Forgive, me, Ultimate Dragon," he whispered, "I must put you to sleep now." He took a deep breath. "Obelisk – attack!"

The God Hand obliterated Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon. The duel computer caught fire as it overloaded from the surge of damage. Klaxons blared, the loudspeakers chanted "System malfunction, system malfunction," he could hear shouting in the control room high above, but all that paled as he looked at his Obelisk card.

With a God as his protector, he would have nothing to fear.

_._

_~ to be continued ~_

_._

_._

_._

Thanks go out (though 6 years late) to ori for the annotated translation of the manga and the original anime's version of the scene between Ishizu and Kaiba, long before anyone had anything other than raws to look at.

The anime they watch in this chapter is Mahou Tsukai Tai (Magic User's Club). Human brooms!

Rather than quote extensively from wikipedia, I recommend the curious look up information on kendo (and/or information on Fudōshin (不動心, ふどうしん), and Muladhara (the "root chakra"). "Physically, Muladhara governs sexuality, mentally it governs stability, emotionally it governs sensuality, and spiritually it governs a sense of security."

(24) 23 August 2010 ~ it's Valentine's, not White Day!


	7. Studied Indifference

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

.

"Just relax Jacq, you're doing fine," Mokuba said in a stage whisper to the pink-haired young woman standing nervously in the Kaiba Corporation CEO's private conference room.

At the head of the table, Kaiba held a stack of patterned glass plates up to the light. "What prevents players from pooling their puzzle cards? Or stealing them from others to learn the location of the finals?"

She coughed nervously and looked down at her papers. "Plates are validated by the encryption string of the owner's duel disk. Ownership of the plates is updated after each legitimate duel victory. The stack of six has to match the duel disk they're used with."

"What if a duel disk is stolen? Or if a duelist is held hostage or killed and their puzzle cards and deck used against their will?"

"Ah, well, I," she pushed her glasses up and turned red. "I didn't think of that scenario, sir."

"Start thinking now." Although unwilling to show it, Kaiba was impressed. When Mokuba had asked to be in charge of the design to provide qualified players with the location of the final round, Kaiba had assumed he'd whip up an encrypted website with a database back-end. What Mokuba had done instead was to offer the entire R&D staff two days to put together their _own_ proposals, then had the creators of the three designs submitted pitch their ideas to Kaiba. This, the third design, was by far the best: not only was it almost completely forgery-proof, it was elegant as well.

 _Far_ superior to star chips.

"Oh!" The nervous tech seemed to have been inspired. "We, er, we can upload data on the registered user's bioprocesses when the disk is first equipped! That way we'll know if a unit is being used by someone other than the original owner."

"What if they're wearing long sleeves?" Kaiba asked in a bored drawl, tapping the stack of glass cards on the conference table.

"That'll just block the Galvanic Response and skin pH readings, not the EEG and EKG."

Kaiba snapped the cards down on the conference table. "Alright, we'll use this Puzzle Card design of yours."

"Really? _Really?_ Oh wow, thank you!"

"Fabrication is now your top priority," Kaiba said with unremitting sternness, steamrolling her joy. "Plates for a thousand duelists must be ready 2 days before the tournament opening. Everyone else working on the tournament is on schedule, so you are now the critical path milestone. Fail and you'll never work in the tech sector again." He then nodded at Mokuba. "I've looked at her file. Might as well order one."

Mokuba clapped and jumped down from the counter he had been sitting on. "I _knew_ you would say that! I already had one made in her favorite color!" He took a pink cell phone from his pocket, which he handed to Jacq. "If you want to join the Corps, that is."

She looked puzzled until she saw the stylized poppy on the phone's startup screen. "Oh yes, I accept!" she said, bowing low with a tiny squeal. "I can't believe it!" She looked as if she was going to hug Mokuba, decided against it, and then ran out of the conference room.

Mokuba looked disappointed: he enjoyed being hugged by women. "So you liked it?"

"Obviously. Good ideas. Both of you," Kaiba said, and then paid his highest compliment. "I would not have thought of it."

Mokuba beamed.

"Sign this." Kaiba slid a paper across the table.

Mokuba picked it up. "Tournament rules? Why should I sign it?"

"Tournament rules aren't official without the commissioner's signature."

"Commissioner? Me?" Mokuba let out a whoop.

Fighting a smile, Kaiba tossed him a silver whistle. "You'll be responsible for making sure that everything runs smoothly, that everyone follows the rules. I don't want anything to interfere with my duels with the God Card holders."

"Do you think they'll enter the tournament?"

"Of course. The Hunters will be eager to add to their hoard." Kaiba strode to the window and looked out over downtown Domino. "And once they find out that I have Obelisk, they'll come for me."

.

The night before the official tournament announcement – it had been unofficially publicized on the internet for quite a while, to allow international duelists time to make travel arrangements – Mokuba was sitting at a computer in the conference room reviewing the list of potential participants. "Seto, I found a mistake."

"Impossible." Kaiba had commandeered the table to sort and organize his cards.

"The database is missing someone."

"Who?"

"Second place at Duelist Kingdom," Mokuba said, "and a level seven rare card."

Without looking up from his cards Kaiba said, "The database is correct."

"Every kid that's won more than two matches at Kaibaland is in the database, but not him?"

"He has nothing I want." He briskly moved several small piles of rejected cards from the table back into his briefcase.

Mokuba folded his arms. "That's no reason to keep him out. As the Commissioner it's my duty to make sure everyone is treated fairly, and I say he should be in the database. "

Kaiba turned, raising an eyebrow. "Are you going to make me regret giving you that responsibility?"

"If you're trying to get me to bend the rules, yes." Mokuba put on his stern face.

"Fine." He stepped to the computer and typed angrily.

"Now you're just being mean," Mokuba said, watching the entry screen with a scowl. "A 'Worthless Nobody' classification? At least make him a Level 5 – you know he's poor and can't afford to buy a Duel Disk for the tournament!"

"That's not my concern," Kaiba said, moving back to study the matrix of 40 cards he'd left on the table. "You asked me to put him in the database. He's now in the database." Satisfied at last with this build of his main deck, he began to select cards for side decks tailored to the various opponents he expected to face. Of course with Obelisk in his deck, it almost didn't matter what other cards he used, but composing decks was still an enjoyable exercise.

"Why do you hate him so much?" Mokuba asked. "He's a good guy." He frowned. "Did you forget how he sacrificed himself to save me when we were in the Five's VR game?"

"That was only a virtual life," Kaiba said airily, "so it was easy for him to throw away." He thumbed through a stack of Trap Cards. There was no point telling Mokuba he hadn't forgotten: it wasn't relevant.

"C'mon Seto! You know we didn't know that then. The Five said if we died in the game we couldn't return to our bodies." Mokuba looked out the window. "And _they_ never did, did they?"

Unwilling to concede the point, Kaiba didn't reply.

"Are you – " Mokuba sounded worried and tentative, "are you trying to keep Jounouchi out of the tournament because you're afraid to duel him?"

Kaiba turned to glare at his brother. He knew what Mokuba had left unsaid, that Kaiba was already afraid to duel Yugi. "Afraid? _Afraid?_ Most of the high-level cards Jounouchi has are pity donations from Mutou. He's a mediocre duelist, with no understanding of strategy! The only reason he won in the past is because his irrational, luck-based play-style happened to coincide with an opponent's sloppiness!" He saw that Mokuba was startled by his outburst, and so he composed himself and continued calmly, "In short, a weak player, despite his few rare cards." That gave Kaiba an inspiration on how to end this uncomfortable conversation. "Dueling him would be beneath me. However, he'd be an ideal target for the Ghouls."

"So," Mokuba said slowly, sounding puzzled, "you're – _protecting_ him? Keeping him out so he doesn't lose his rare cards?"

"No. I don't care what happens to Jounouchi or his cards. But if the Ghouls organization has infiltrated tournament operations they will notice the discrepancy between his rare card and his level and consider him easy prey. If they want to legitimately strip his deck of anything useful they will have to first edit his data so that he qualifies for a free Duel Disk. Doing so will reveal them to us."

"Oh!" Mokuba nodded. "I see! He's _bait!_ That's why you rated him so low." He propped his chin on his hand. "So ... what would you rank him at if you weren't using him to catch the Rare Card Hunters?"

"I don't have time for this, Mokuba." He placed the last of his cards back in his briefcase and snapped the latches shut. "I have a helicopter to catch, and a tournament to announce."

.

The week that followed brought Kaiba a welcome feeling, too long absent, that he was once again in control of his domain. He saw task after task completed successfully by the various Poppy teams. The locator cards were ready a day ahead of schedule. The city commissioners doubled their contribution to tournament costs once they found out that Domino hotels had been booked to capacity. The sales of the new Duel Disk system quickly exceeded quarterly projections, as the information that Battle City registrants would receive a free system was apparently dismissed by most as a rumor.

And, as anticipated, when registration opened, the deliberately unprotected tournament registration database was hacked within the hour.

"Two edits so far, and from the same IP address! The card shop at the corner of Fourth and Gaki," Mokuba shouted. "Let's go arrest them!"

"No." Kaiba was reviewing the streams of data pouring in as duelists equipped their Duel Disks and their inserted decks were scanned and uploaded.

"No?" Mokuba was puzzled. "Aren't we supposed to catch the Ghouls?"

"Catch one tiny fish, while dozen of large ones swim free? No, let them think that they are unobserved. Continue to trace all communications from the storefront." One of the Central Control Room techs handed him a wireless palmtop, now synced to automatically update the status of select duelists. He scrolled though quickly. Mutou hadn't checked in yet.

He didn't have long to wait. A few minutes later the pad flashed: Yugi had completed registration, and his deck was being scanned. At the same time, Mokuba said, "Jounouchi's just been edited. Same shop as before."

"As I anticipated," Kaiba said coolly.

.

They had dinner in the conference room, Mokuba eating while Kaiba spread out his cards again, re-considering each in light of the data collected about the decks of the tournament participants.

"Ha," Mokuba said, glancing over as his pad beeped, "Duelists who can't wait til morning. They're gonna wish they'd waited when they find out about the puzzle cards." He frowned as more details were displayed. "Jounouchi and – hey! The other guy is unregistered, and his deck is generating a lot of scan errors!"

"Oh?" Kaiba asked mildly. "A Ghoul with counterfeit cards?"

"We should warn – oh no! He just lost his Red Eyes!" Mokuba put down the pad. "We have to go help him, Seto!"

He sighed. "Mokuba, by the time we get there the Ghoul will be gone. If you want to spend the rest of the evening listening to the mediocrity blubber in an alley about his lost card – that's your choice. It's not mine." He kept his face impassive. _How careless! The tournament hasn't even started and the idiot's already crippled!_

.

The next morning's opening ceremony went smoothly. He returned to Central Control to oversee the tournament operations – and in light of the events of the night before, to make sure that card scanning and tracking systems were working flawlessly.

"Yugi"s dueling," Mokuba said excitedly. "His opponent is 'Seeker'? I don't remember seeing that name on the list."

One of the techs said, "Seeker's deck generated twenty-two _Unvalidated Card_ errors."

Kaiba nodded. "So many errors from the same deck is most likely another Ghoul with counterfeits. He folded his arms. "Output the duel to the main display."

"We have to stop him! Fake cards are against the rules!" Mokuba picked up his whistle and headed for the door.

"Wait, Mokuba. Let them play and we'll see what happens." He tapped a screen to bring up Seeker's deck list. The eighteen cards that _had_ scanned were multiple copies of Graceful Charity and Pot of Greed, and lower-level monsters with extremely high defense. "Hm." Aggressive rotation, setting only to defend, a high number of forged cards ... "It's likely he has three sets of forged Exodia."

"Exodia?" Mokuba was aghast. "Yugi is a great player! We can't let that cheater take advantage of him!"

"There is a way to stop it, if Yugi understands what Seeker is doing, and if he has the right cards in his deck." He brought up Yugi's card list. Yes – there they were. If he drew them in time. "The outcome isn't certain. Yugi can win if he is lucky." Yes, he had to win. To have an unknown, unranked criminal defeat Yugi was unacceptable.

They watched as Yugi played Time Seal to make the Rare Hunter skip his draw phase. "He knows," Kaiba nodded, watching as Lightforce Sword removed the Sealed Right Hand from play for three turns.

"That's great!" Mokuba said. "So that Exodia piece can't be used? And Yugi can attack that guy directly and win?"

"No, it's a short delay only," Kaiba replied. "Seeker likely has multiple copies. Now it is a race of probability." When Swords of Revealing Light was played, preventing Yugi from attacking he said, "Watch, Mokuba. The real duel is just getting started." S _how me your ability, Yugi. Call out to your deck with your Heart of the Cards._ A small smile ghosted over his lips as he saw Yugi activate Chain Destruction to destroy all of Seeker's Head of Exodia cards, Dust Tornado to sweep away the Swords, and then attack Seeker's life points directly for the win. _Truly, I have never had such a worthy opponent._

Mokuba cheered. "Yugi wins!"

"I expected no less." He turned. "Let's check out the tournament, Mokuba."

Mokuba snatched up his whistle and addressed the techs. "Keep scanning for unknown cards, Call us as soon as you find one. And keep the helicopter on standby."

As they rode down in the elevator Kaiba glanced down at Mokuba's pad. The top left panel had running tournament statistics, the top right was a small city map, the bottom left had real-time updates for every active duel, and the bottom right listed the status for three duelists: #1, #7, and #579. Only the third was active. As they walked out of the building into the late morning sunlight Mokuba tapped 579, and a red dot appeared on his map.

"I'm going to … go this way," he said, "if that's OK?"

 _Checking up on the nobody._ "Tournament business?" Kaiba said with a smirk as Mokuba ran off.

.

Whispers of admiration, cameras flashing. He signed autographs for several people who clearly flirted with him. The city was his, and it felt good.

Then he heard Mokuba's whistle nearby.

"You have no right to make the rules!" he heard a rough voice say, and Mokuba's heated reply, "Anyone who breaks the rules is not allowed to continue! Should I ban you now, and take your Duel Disk?"

He turned in the the alley just in time to see a stocky punk take a step towards Mokuba and raise a fist. "Fuck off, you snot-nosed little brat, before I pound you flat!"

"Such rudeness," Kaiba said smoothly. "Are you aware that threatening and insulting my brother is the same as threatening and insulting me – and all of Kaiba Corporation?"

The punk paled. "Oh, Mr. Kaiba sir, I'm sorry. I didn't know this kid – "

Kaiba set down his briefcase, opened it, and spun the case around for the punk to see. "Duel me. And I'm sorry, but I will require that you use as many of these Rare cards as you can. I will ante two puzzle cards."

The punk was so overcome by greed that he accepted this outrageous offer without question. "Don't apologize, man," he said. "This will be great!"

"Yes," Kaiba said, feeling the energy in his deck reaching out already. "Yes, it will."

.

Of course using Obelisk on the punk had been punishment and not a real duel, but at least he'd picked up two puzzle cards ("Take them," the loser had whimpered, cringing as he held out four of the glass plates, "Take them all!" but at Mokuba's "He can't, it's against the rules!" Kaiba had smiled and took only what had been bet.)

He continued to smile as they left the alley. This new simplicity of focus – find God Cards, duel Yugi – was so energizing compared to the fervid, pointless, churning thoughts and emotions he had been weighed down by during the past few months. He felt liberated from captivity for the first time since Duelist Kingdom, and to celebrate he took a deep, deep breath of cool, early-afternoon air.

"Oh no! Seto, Yugi's signal has disappeared from the sensor!" Mokuba pointed to the red bar highlighting the status for duelist #7 _._

"His signal disappeared? Have the Ghouls taken him?" Yugi would have to be very deep underground for the signal to be lost.

He was not going to consider other possibilities.

Fortunately, Mokuba located Yugi a quarter of an hour, calling in a breathless tale of a secret underground torture room and a deranged, horribly scarred duelist cradling a mannequin.

Thus ended Battle City, Day One. The sooner he acquired the other two God Cards and defeated Yugi, the better.

.

He was in Central the next morning before dawn. Impatiently, he waited for Yugi to enter combat, or for a God Card to appear.

"You're sure he hasn't signed on yet? Could you have lost his signal like you did yesterday?"

"No sir. We put in an augmenter and a special tracer last night, specifically tuned to Mutou's signal."

He nodded, but continued to glare at the monitors, as if he could will Yugi and the God Cards into being.

He was brought out of his reverie a little after 11 am by Mokuba's cheer. "What is it?"

Mokuba looked momentarily guilty, then said offhandedly, "Jounouchi just beat Insector Haga. He won Insect Queen and _two_ puzzle cards."

"Is that so?" Kaiba frowned and pulled up the data. Four puzzle cards already? How was that possible? He reviewed the play by play. Despite the use of the ridiculous RNG dice cards, and the inexplicably suicidal move of having a parasite card in his deck when challenging an Insect Master, he had to admit the nobody had played well.

Mokuba chuckled. "He might qualify for the finals if he does that again."

 _That_ wasn't going to happen. "We're going out."

It was ridiculous that the nobody now had more puzzle cards than he did, but unlike the blond he had to choose his opponents carefully. Six months ago, the thought of dueling him had visibly terrified some of his opponents; now it seemed that there were quite a few players unafraid to take him on. He wouldn't lose, of course, but if those he defeated were too weak, his victories would be denigrated as easy wins, seen as pablum for a toothless duelist with "diminished prowess." He told over a dozen challengers "No" before he caved in to a red-haired kid who was obnoxiously insistent.

Obelisk was in his hand by the second draw, but he used his old Crush Card Virus strategy instead. Some people just weren't worthy of a God Card.

As he was saying "No" to a post-defeat autograph Mokuba's pad beeped. Yugi was in combat.

"Display." He studied the field. Revival Slime. Slime generator. Slime tokens. Slime Defender. But no God card. Mildly interesting, but he was sure that Yugi would find a way to defeat whoever this was.

He called Central. "Status?"

"Nothing so far."

"Inform me as soon as you find any anomalies. The helicopter is ready?"

"Yes sir. Ready at a moment's notice."

.

"Mokuba, let me see your pad." He considered for a moment, then tapped Duelist 579 and noted that the red dot was just a few blocks away.

He was tempted to duel Jounouchi – if they anted four puzzle cards he'd be set for the final and Jounouchi would be out of the tournament – but he had a feeling that Mokuba would call him on it. However, that didn't mean he couldn't do some deflating. Jounouchi had probably left the Weyr thinking he would soon have Kaiba eating out of his hand; that error needed to be remedied.

The blond was standing around wasting time with the cheerleaders and the old man. They looked up as he approached. "How did a nobody like you get a disk?"

"Because I'm a duelist!" Jounouchi said.

Kaiba could see immediately that interacting with Jounouchi in public was a mistake: the idiot blond was smiling at him in a much too obvious way. If this wasn't stopped their private interactions would be out in the open in no time. "But aren't you only level 2? Eh, never mind. Let's go, Mokuba." He turned to go.

"Kaiba! Duel me! I'll show you what this nobody can do!" Jounouchi, his back to his friends, winked.

"You aren't good enough to beat my brother," Mokuba retorted.

And then Kaiba noticed the dogtag. "Does your owner know you're running around the streets loose? Better hide before someone takes you to the pound and has you neutered."

Jounouchi grinned. "I'm my own dog, Kaiba. But I'd be happy to come over there and mark you as my territory if ya want. Your coat could use a splash of yellow."

 _They pissed on you when they were done._

"Alright, I'll duel you." The blond would whimper like the punk in the alley did: it would be very satisfying. He could feel Obelisk's power rising already, swirling around them like a strong wind.

And then a voice from his lapel communicator. "Sir! We found it! The copter will take you!" A rope ladder clattered from the sky.

"What the hell?" Jounouchi was shaking his fist.

"The duel is canceled," Kaiba said, climbing quickly. "I have better things to do than waste time with you."

"What?"

"We spared you today," Mokuba said with a laugh as the helicopter rose. "Be grateful!"

They could hear Jounouchi's curses and threats for almost a block.

.

 _~ to be continued ~_

 _._

 _._

 _._

 __A big thanks to Sukaitsuki for helping me understand "uma no hone," Kaiba's epithet of choice for Jounouchi for most of Battle City. An idiomatic expression that means "a nobody," it literally translates as "horse's bones." (Even after Jouno's record is edited to level 5, he still is labeled an "umo no hone" on the official Battle City website – see ep 58, about 6 minutes in where Honda finds the info on the Roba duel for Shizuka.) ~ Speaking of which, the BC screens shown in the anime give the following duelist IDs: Yugi is # 007, Mai #062, and Jou #579 :p I'd like to know who 1-6 are. (Kaiba, Pegs, Haga, Ryzuki, Keith Howard, and Mokuba, maybe?)

I played a bit with apparent continuity: although the BC announcement from the helicopter seems to me to be the "opening night", it's only a few minutes later in the episode in which Obelisk is tested. With the excuse that this is an AU :p, I decided to shuffle Obelisk up sooner (and thus it appeared in the previous chapter) as I'd think he'd test it almost as soon as he got it, whereas the preparations and manufacturing for the tournament would take longer than just a few hours. ~ The actual tournament timeline is a bit wonky too. Though the subs say that BC starts one week after the announcement, the following scene seems to suggest that registration was the following day, and the kickoff one day after that. ~ So I left it vague, though I don't imagine many really care about this nit-picky continuity stuff :p

The elegant older man I called "Jotun" in chapter 6, is, I find out, called Scott Irvine, and leaves KaibaCorp at some point to become the villainous creator of virtual mayhem and summoner of DarkNite in Falsebound Kingdom. Drat! Should I re-write? No! – screw the rules, I have AU!

Regarding dueling:<br />  
a) I mostly ignored the "proper" English rule of spelling out number words and used numerals. Exceptions were when a sentence or bit of dialog started with a number. Or if it was dramatic to spell it out.<br />  
b) I took a little creative liberty with card and spell names here and there. For example, "Big Shield Gardna" became "Big Shield Guardian."

There is frequent use of the phrase "A real duelist." The Japanese is "shin no" duelist – literally, "duelist of truth." Genuine, real, true, utter. I'm not sure there's any particular English word that captures that meaning best, though perhaps the adjective "consummate" comes close.

P.S. The helicopter Kaiba took in ep 66 after his non-duel with Jou was apparently radio-controlled (a feat seen again at the end the death-duel).

.

(12) 27 July 2010 ~ minor tweaks


	8. Temporary Chapter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you are reading the story from the beginning, skip this placeholder chapter and go to the next, which takes place during the Millennium World (ancient Egypt) arc.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

 

.

The Battle City finals were through. He had fought Noah and Gozaburo, Dartz and his Orichalcos duelists, and had survived the Grand Prix championship. Now he could go back to fulfilling his dream of building more KaibaLand Parks.

America might be a good place to start.

.

.

 **Author's Note:**

The above text is just a placeholder: At some point this "chapter" of _Coming Clean_ will be replaced by a full chapter.

You may ask, why haven't I written this material – Battle City Finals, DOMA, Grand Prix? Isn't the story listed as finished?

The short answer is that, in June, when I was trying to wrap the story up, getting through the entire series by covering the episodes in the kind of detail I used in chapters 6 and 7 would have killed me and bored most readers – but neither did I want the fic to stall there and remain unfinished.

As I feel that Kaiba's character development culminates with his anime appearances in the Memory World arc, I made the decision to temporarily drop my original idea of doing a blow by blow of the episodes of Battle City, and the three filler arcs (Noah, Doma and Grand Prix) and instead tuck them in as flashbacks and lessons learned during final chapters set during episodes 213-218.

Not that it was an easy decision: I forced myself to skip over more than _half_ the series' episodes, and many many _many_ scenes that I had wanted to explore in depth: Kaiba roughly urging YYugi on during the duel with Strings; Kaiba tag-teaming against Lumis and Umbra; Kaiba's revelation during the duel with Ishizu; the entire Noah arc (which has so much terrific Kaiba material); Kaiba's defeat in the Battle City finals, and all the juicy bits in Doma. And I haven't even watched Grand Prix yet …

Now that certain other things have settled out, I feel I might go back and revisit that material at some point. - Hence, this temporary chapter. If I never get to it - some RL issues may intervene - at least it'll be easier for people to hop over the gap. and if I do write it, I can slip it in with the minimum of fanfare.

And as always, the date and rev number at the end of each chapter will let you know when additional material has been rolled in to fill a chapter out.

(01) 1 Sept 2010


	9. Identification

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> Note: This chapter is spoiler-heavy, especially for episodes 199-217 (Memory World / ancient Egypt arc).

.

In the place that wasn't real, hot, dry air blew grains of sand that stung his face. Far ahead, where the faint line of hoofprints in the sand melted into the horizon, he could see arcs and flashes of light.

"Do as you like," the Pharaoh had said.

.

It had been annoying from the start. That asshole Bakura, hauling Mokuba to the roof in the middle of the night (and he would find out later how _that_ had been accomplished), then asking for a duel. It all would have been over very quickly – Bakura wasn't in his league – except that, just as he summoned the Blue Eyes, he'd been interrupted by those images: first of the stone slab and the white-haired girl and the inverted pyramid hanging from a ceiling of black clouds, and then with a replay of Obelisk and Osiris clashing during his Battle City duel with Yugi. Fortunately Bakura's impatience had snapped him out of it and they had continued, but clearly Bakura knew he was outmatched and so had conceded the duel a few turns later. And then, something Kaiba absolutely had not anticipated: Bakura tossed him the Millennium Eye, claiming that only in Egypt would Kaiba find the full truth of the link between himself and the Blue Eyes White Dragon.

It was nonsense, of course. When he heard that Yugi had left for Egypt he had remembered Bakura's tossing around some bullshit about an "Ultimate Game of Darkness" and wondered if Yugi had gone to participate in it. While definitely curious, he nevertheless would have let it drop – he was putting every waking hour into KaibaLand planning – except for the fact that someone continued to toy with him, sending more "visions" and broadcasting odd sounds into his office.

The Millennium Eye pointed to the culprit. Even though Pegasus had given Yugi the Legend of Heart card which had been the key to defeating Dartz, Kaiba knew first hand how two-faced and mischievously vindictive the ToonMaster could be. "Pegasus," he had muttered to the Eye, warning whoever might be listening, "These hocus-pocus mind-games are just a trail of bread crumbs to lure me to Egypt. But I'll play." He added to himself that he would turn the trap around and snare Pegasus, Bakura, and anyone else stupid enough to be messing with him.

And then he realized: the Egyptian woman Ishizu Ishtar. She knew Pegasus, had worked with him on the god cards, and her meeting with him had been the first of the strange events that had harassed him ever since. (And her brother Marik had been present during all of the Battle City "visions.") She _must_ be working with Pegasus and Bakura.

As he'd expected, a call to the Domino Museum had confirmed that Ishizu had taken the Egyptian exhibit, and herself, back to Egypt. He'd arranged a flight. At the museum in Cairo, Ishizu had given him another bread crumb, told him that the Blue Eyes tablet had been returned to its original location. She had not offered to lead him there, of course, but she just _happened_ to have a map to give him. As he drove into the desert he wondered what connected the three conspirators, but nothing came to mind. No matter: he'd know soon enough.

At the location Ishizu had marked he had found a small box canyon. As he shut off the Jeep's engine he noticed that the area was completely devoid of all movement and sound; even the ubiquitous cicadas were silent. As he walked towards the cave-like door carved into one of the cliff faces he had realized that his footsteps were soundless. It was disconcerting,

"Ridiculous," he had muttered as he went though the door and descended stone steps into shadow.

Someone lay at the bottom of the steps: Bakura. Had he been double crossed? Kaiba found the thought satisfying. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light in the crypt he had seen the huge stone tablet ahead of him – and on the ground front of it the bodies of Yugi, Jounouchi, and the two cheerleaders.

He had hurried to them, but their chests moved with slow breaths. Unconscious, not dead.

And then the Millennium Eye had begun to thrum and glow, and unable to drop it or turn away, he had found himself subjected to another show: a new one, in which the high priest spoke of a white dragon that would lead him to victory and the pharaoh urged the priest to join forces with him to defeat "the Great God Zorukh" ... It was strange and nonsensical, the masked Shadow Magus, the man dressed as Exodia and then the pain (familiar) as he was pulled into the light, flung through a crushing tunnel (he knew this sensation too) that finally showed him the same strange pyramid (he had seen this before) in the sky (a sky now blue).

He dove toward the ground, landing without injury in what looked like an ancient city. He hadn't taken more than a few steps before something hit him, a shock that squeezed his heart and pulled the air out of his lungs, and he'd blacked out.

.

When he came to he had a disorienting sense of chasing something that was staying one step ahead of him, but it faded as he pushed himself to his feet, and began to walk towards the end of the alley. What was going on?

That's right. Bakura, Pegasus, and Ishizu had conspired to lure him to a remote cave in Egypt. But where was he now?

Ahead of him was a marketplace lining both sides of a wide avenue. All the buildings were stone; all the people were dressed in costume, robes and turbans. Familiar, and yet the costumes and architecture looked wrong –

Two laughing boys ran toward, and then _through_ him, as if they were the reality and he the illusion. Was he dreaming?

No, his dreams were never under this much conscious control, and never had this much experiential detail: the dusty wind swirling his coat, the sun heating his clothes, the dozens of overlapping sounds. A virtual world, then? Although ... it seemed it too substantial even for a virtual world. The weakness in his arms and legs, the lingering pain in his chest, the sand in his mouth when he'd regained consciousness – such somatic realism wasn't possible with current technology. He licked the back of his hand, and tasted salt. Taste wasn't possible with the inputs from a biosuit: unless chemically reactive agents were present in the environment, you had to tap directly into the brain –

Brain. A horrifying thought struck him: Had he _died_ in that ancient crypt? Was he now digital, the way his stepbrother and adoptive father had been, his entire consciousness, his thoughts and senses, now existing only as faint electric pulses inside one of Kaiba Corporation's supercomputers? No. It was impossible, if for no other reason than that they never would have got him to Gozaburo's transfer interface, ten thousand kilometers away, in time.

Yes, he _had_ to be alive, and this was a virtual world, because the only other possibility … well, he'd read enough about the mathematics of Lorentzian manifolds to know that, while time-travel had some _theoretical_ support, it was ridiculous to even consider the idea that he could have been transported to the Egypt of thousands of years ago. Ridiculous. No, he was sure of it now: somehow Pegasus, possibly working with Ishizu, had been able to develop, completely in secret, a next-gen VR system.

So why had they brought him here? The avenue led toward a big stone building with stepped terraces, which was was clearly where he was meant to go. "Like hell I will." He'd go anywhere _but_ there until he figured out more of what was going on.

Still confused and angrier than ever, he heard someone calling his name.

.

It wasn't because she knew his name and could see and hear him that he had followed her: it was because she had not tried to manipulate him in any way. She had warned him of a coming evil, but had not told him what to do about it, where to go. He didn't think that she had been scripted by the plotters; in fact, just as trusting in the Blue Eyes had brought him victory in his duel with Ishizu, he suspected that this girl was the key to thwarting schemes against him here. When she said, "Perhaps we'll meet again someday," and headed away from the palace, he was sure of it.

North across a blazing yellow landscape that rippled with heat, he followed her to a small temple. She ran up the stone steps to the priest, took his hand. The sight of them had the click of familiarity: they were the two from the vision of the tablet of the Blue Eyes that he had been shown so many times.

He eavesdropped from behind a pillar as they talked, started to run, but were confronted by the masked Shadow Magus who he had seen in the visions in the tomb. "Kill this woman Seto! With the power of the White Dragon, you can rule as Pharaoh at the side of The Great Darkness!"

Seto? White Dragon? As he edged closer, ignored by the combatants, he heard the priest defy the Shadow Magus, calling him both Akunadin and father. After that what seemed to be a duel commenced; to his amazement, after his first monster was destroyed the priest summoned a Blue Eyes White Dragon!

Akunadin restrained the Blue Eyes with a Spellbinding Circle, then raised a stone slab from the ground. "Kill the woman, Seto," he exhorted again, "The power of the White Dragon is the power that surpasses the Gods!"

Kaiba shook his head, straining to hear the priest, who had taken the girl's hand and was shouting back at his monstrous father, "What is there to benefit from a world of darkness? Since I met Kisara, I realized how much of the world is already dark and lifeless. The way to make the darkness disappear is with the light of love!"

Kaiba gasped as the girl was struck down. He realized now that he had been mistaken: every time he had seen the vision of the priest carrying the girl – Kisara – to the stone tablet of the Blue Eyes, he had assumed he was seeing a random human sacrifice by primitives that worshiped the Blue Eyes as a god. He saw differently now: she was connected to the Blue Eyes. Her death had been what sealed the dragon into the stone.

He held his breath as the stunned priest cried, "My true father died when I was a child!" and then plunged a sword into Akunadin – and then, just as Gozaburo had planned to take his body, Akunadin had possessed the priest's body, crying, "Merge with me and become the King of Darkness!"

And then he heard the clatter of hooves as Yugi's Dark – dressed as Pharaoh! – had ridden past him.

"I'll kill you here, and become the King of Darkness!" the possessed priest had cried as he and Yugi began to duel.

And now Kaiba saw the source of the mural that Ishizu had shown him, the source of the vision that he had seen during his duel atop Alcatraz Tower: the high priest that looked like him battling the pharaoh who looked like Yugi. Blue Eyes versus Dark Magician.

"Take this attack, filled with hatred!"

The priest's words and fighting spirit were ugly. With a shock Kaiba realized that, not only did they echo Gozaburo's words, they also echoed those he himself had often used. Did he too become this twisted in the blaze of battle? "Disappear, hatred!" he whispered. What had happened to the priest's belief in light and love?

The Dark Magician was destroyed. The pharaoh, as if hearing Kaiba's thoughts, called out to the priest, asking him if he had already forgotten the light that filled his soul, if he had forgotten his duty to protect his country? "Are you content to become the King of Darkness, living out your father's hate?"

The possessed priest had laughed, ordered the Blue Eyes to attack. Kaiba clutched his fist, This was not how it should end! He heard the spirit of Akunadin shouting, "Why don't you attack?"

And then, though it was impossible, he knew _,_ as the Blue Eyes disappeared, that it was taking its light to the priest, that it was burning out the hate-filled monster that was controlling him. He could see it happening, superimposed over a second vision – no, not a vision, a _memory_. He had just been defeated by Dark's Exodia, and as he fell, crushed by disbelief, stripped of everything, he had been alone in a void, curled in on himself. His unseeing eyes had stared at the blackness, his ears had burned as they fearfully scanned the silence, his whole body had dreaded the heavy footstep, the angry breathing that warned him when Gozaburo had come to punish him for his failure. His back had quivered, fearing where the cane would fall, where the cigar's glowing tip would sear him … and just when he thought he would dissolve from the terror and uncertainty, a pinpoint of light had bloomed, grown, became the Blue Eyes he had destroyed. Cowering and speechless as it roared at him, he had been amazed as it had filled the air with a blue light that sifted over him like snow. He did not deserve it, he did not deserve it, and yet despite his deficiencies the Blue Eyes covered him with fury and forgiveness before finally shattering into a flood of gold that poured into his chest.

Kaiba blinked, and the vision faded. Hatred was gone. Gozaburo was gone. Akunadin was gone.

The battle had stopped. The grieving priest carried the girl's body to the slab. Kaiba stepped from his hiding place and walked toward them, not sure what he was going to say.

"Kaiba!" So the pharaoh could see him. "You're also in this world?"

"I found the other Yugi, Bonkotsu, and the others unconscious before the stone tablet. Then something brought me here." He nodded at the stone. "What happened just now – it wasn't the same conclusion as what I saw during our battle on the duel tower. In that vision the priest let darkness take him over. Just now, it seems the priest rejected darkness and hate."

"Yes, the Game of Darkness has changed."

"Game of Darkness? So this is the so-called Ultimate Game?" Kaiba scoffed.

"You're free to believe it or not. But a great evil is rising. You need to leave, quickly!"

Kaiba bristled. The pharaoh didn't want him here? Thought him of no use? Hadn't he proved himself to be a worthy partner? Hadn't he helped Yugi's cheerleaders, time and again? Didn't their tag team duels against Lumis and Umbra, the research into Ra and the gift of Fiend's Sanctuary, and the sacrifice that activated Wish of Final Effort mean anything? It seemed not. "You may be a pharaoh in this simulation, but you don't command me. I want to see this terrifying god for myself."

"Kaiba … " The pharaoh seemed surprised at his reaction.

"And him?" Kaiba indicated the priest. "Have you told him to leave as well?"

"High Priest Seto is my trusted companion and friend."

Meaning that he was not. "He also commands the Blue Eyes White Dragon. Akunadin said that its power rivals the gods."

Before the pharaoh could reply the ground shook and oppressive dark clouds rolled in from every direction. Far in the distance a pillar of red light shot up, and was answered by one from the clouds. After that, a dark mass emerged from a fiery glow where the pillars had been.

"The Great Dark God Zorukh," Pharaoh said. He turned to look at the priest.

The priest whispered, "Kisara, lend me your power." He covered her with his cloak, stood, and called to the pharaoh, "We must save them!" as if Kaiba wasn't there.

"What will you do?" the pharaoh asked Kaiba.

"I already told you. You have no power over me." He was not going to be dismissed as if he was a servant.

To Kaiba's amazement, the pharaoh said, "Do as you like," then rode off with the priest toward the dark horizon.

Once they were out of sight, Kaiba went to the woman's corpse. He had an urge to pull back the covering, to see her face again, but stopped himself. Not only was it irrational to feel any emotion for a virtual creature, he would be playing into their hands. Obviously Kisara had been created to play on his attachment to the Blue Eyes, but he couldn't understand why. To get him to identify with the priest? And now that the priest had rejected the darkness, was Kaiba supposed to step in and challenge the pharaoh in the priest's place? Was priest versus pharaoh the Ultimate Game of Darkness?

"I make my own destiny," he said, turning away. "I choose my own path!" His only witness was the harsh wind, whipping his coat and stinging his face as he stepped out into the shadowed desert.

.

It was amusing, he thought as he trudged across the sand, that whoever was behind this farce had misunderstood him so completely. Clearly they knew of his rivalry with Yugi, and had brought him here thinking that he would be eager for a rematch – but had they really thought he'd be anyone's obedient puppet?

And had they really thought it necessary to spend so much effort using Kisara and the Blue Eyes to get him to identify with the priest – the priest to whom they'd already given his name and likeness – when they'd already gone overboard with the "a son that defies and then kills a twisted father determined to mold him into a tool to continue his legacy of death"?

It was all so laughably heavy-handed.

Faint sounds of battle began to drift over the sand like fog. He'd discounted the pharaoh's talk of a great god of darkness and evil, but the creature he could see lumbering in from the east was impressively programmed, he'd admit that. Roars and vibrations of earth were being realistically modulated with distance, and care was being taken with the environmentals: as "Zorukh" got closer the temperature was dropping noticeably and there was an increasingly unpleasant ionic quality to the air.

He climbed a low dune. Below, soldiers were massed, rank and file, to protect an opening in a high stone wall. In the midst of the solders a group of robed figures – more priests? – stood. Behind them a wide avenue, lined with hundreds of stone huts, ran in a straight line through the outskirts of the city to the palace.

There was a shout, and several crude catapults lobbed stones at Zorukh; an instant later, dozens of soldiers flew in the air as the ground heaved and exploded. He saw flashes of light from the priests, and then saw Duel Monsters – Spiria, Jackal Warrior, Dark Magician Girl, and the high priest's monster Duos – materialize and attack. Zorukh sent a concussion wave that destroyed them all, and then a bolt of lightning struck one of the priests.

He made his way closer. Now he could see the pharaoh, the high priest, and others that looked familiar – Yugi's grandfather, Ishizu. The priest raised his arm, and a volley of stones and arrows hit Zorukh from the catapults and archers nearest to Kaiba. He crouched, watching as a Winged Guardian of the Fortress flew off to the south; it flew back in sight a few minutes later, a passenger dismounted, and then it flew off again, dodging a few of Zorukh's fireballs before it was destroyed.

He shook his head. Nothing they were doing was having any effect on Zorukh at all. The Duel Monsters had had no effect, and the catapults and archers might as well have been flinging feathers. They'd better come up with something with a little more power.

Just as he thought this, five glowing pentagrams appeared on the ground between the soldiers and Zorukh. Kaiba held his breath as a colossal golden figure rose from the earth.

"Exodia!" he whispered, and edged closer. The priest who looked like Yugi's grandfather seemed to be commanding it, and his eyes widened in remembrance: Yugi had used his grandfather's deck during their first duel. The duel that had summoned Exodia. The duel that had been his first defeat.

And then, as he stood there, watching Exodia grapple with the dark god, he realized that he was thirsty. Suddenly, _painfully,_ thirsty.

Virtual bodies did not feel thirst.

He was not in a virtual world.

.

 _~ to be continued ~_

.

.

.

A note to reviewers who plan to scold me about the many "facts" wrong in this chapter (e.g., that Bakura did not "concede" the duel with Kaiba, that Pegasus had nothing to do with the arc, that Kaiba was not in a virtual world): Keep in mind that this chapter, like most of this story, is written from Kaiba's perspective. He's not always a reliable narrator, he's a tad egocentric, and most of the time the reader will have information about what's really going on that Kaiba does not.

On spellings: to subtly reinforce that this is an AU, as I've done in other chapters I've used slightly variant spellings: Akunadin for Akhenaden/Aknadin, and Zorukh for Zorc/Zork

(08) 5 August 2010


	10. Illumination

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> Warning: Spoilers for the entire series, especially episodes 218-219 (the Memory World / ancient Egypt arc).

.

A cold sweat swept over him; he felt weak and his gut twisted as his body finally forced him to accept what his brain had been rejecting ever since he tasted the salt of his sweat in the marketplace. His hypothesis about where he was was false. Against his will, counter to all reason, somehow he had gone back in time, to a past where science and technology meant nothing, and magic ruled all. To survive he would have to learn and obey whatever logic – however irrational it might be – governed this place.

Was that why the pharaoh had told him to leave? Because he thought that Kaiba couldn't function in a place like this? He folded his arms. Clearly, the pharaoh must think that the recent battles with Doma and the Leviathan had taught him nothing.

Below him, Zorukh sliced through Exodia. As the huge guardian turned to dust the old priest controlling him clutched his chest and collapsed. Kaiba could hear screams of dismay from the soldiers and priests gather by the city gate.

His grumbling was interrupted by a sudden change in the air, a thickening, gathering sensation that he had known well during the time that Obelisk was in his deck. Could it be? He saw a brilliant light radiate from the pharaoh, and three blinding sparks fly from somewhere near the palace and crash into the ground behind Zorukh.

It was! He ran toward them as they rose from the earth, taking in the true form of Obelisk, Osiris, and Ra, the beings that had inspired the God cards. Their power flickered over his skin, almost painful in its intensity, and he understood the meaning of worship. The Three attacked Zorukh, singly and then together, and Kaiba was in awe as the darkness was pushed back, destroyed in an enormous explosion. The clouds receded, the sun broke through, and he cheered along with the people.

And then he saw the pharaoh shake his head.

The ground rumbled as Zorukh's arm reached up from the crater, reaching for the sun, eclipsing it. The light began to fade. The Three attacked again, but now Zorukh slashed the winged ones from the sky, turning them to stone, and shook off Obelisk as if he was a leaf. Horrified, Kaiba remembered the vision he had been shown during his duel with Yugi atop the Duel Tower. At the time, he had thought that the massive stone forms that they had flown over were statues, but he realized now that he had been mistaken. What he had seen, under the sunless sky, were the gods' lifeless corpses. And that vision had continued with the high priest unleashing his White Dragon against the pharaoh.

He ran to the edge of the crater just in time to see the pharaoh fall. The few soldiers left fled towards the palace, leaving only the high priest and a girl by the pharaoh's side.

And then, as the girl hurried away with the pharaoh, the high priest stood tall and faced Zorukh. One lone human against an ultimate evil. The priest gave a war cry and ran at the demon, dodging fireballs.

Kaiba finally understood. From the first he had accepted the stone mural of the priest and the pharaoh, facing each other with their guardians under the three gods, as representing a _rivalry_ between the two, as ancient justification for his competitive antagonism toward Yugi. But it seemed that he had misunderstood, or had been misled. The pharaoh had called High Priest Seto "his trusted companion and friend," and Kaiba could now see why: the high priest who looked like him, who shared his name, was nothing like him, combining the pharaoh's nobility, Yugi's tender heart, Jounouchi's reckless courage, and Masaki's fierce loyalty.

The priest held the Millennium Rod aloft, calling forth a blue-white ball of light that unfolded into the White Dragon. As Zorukh was knocked back, losing an arm, the eclipse lessened.

Kaiba clenched his fists. "Strike again!" he urged the dragon, "While the demon is weakened! Defeat the darkness!"

Too late. Zorukh's vicious serpent-like phallus burst up from the ground, snapping the White Dragon's neck and turning it to stone. The priest staggered and collapsed. "The White Dragon's power is useless," Zorukh boasted, tossing the dragon aside.

"No," Kaiba said, "it was not." One dragon, alone, had had the same effect as the pharaoh's Three gods – and Kaiba had three dragons. If he could get to the pharaoh, certainly the two of them could defeat Zorukh, as they had worked together to defeat other enemies – the Five God dragon, the Masks of Light and Dark, Dartz. There would be a way that they would do it again.

Zorukh strode into the city's central avenue, stopping every few steps to blast the fleeing inhabitants with flame.

Kaiba scrambled up the wreckage of the wall enclosing the city, then used it to get on the rooftops. He had to get to the palace, and the pharaoh, ahead of Zorukh. Fortunately the narrow, crowded side streets made jumping from roof to roof easy.

He was several blocks ahead of Zorukh when he heard children in in the street calling for help. He ran to the edge of the roof and saw them – two boys, the same age as he and Mokuba had been when they arrived at the orphanage.

He jumped down between the boys and Zorukh. If he could buy them some time, perhaps they could duck into and alley. "Run – hurry!" he shouted to them, then turned to face the demon. The rational part of his mind knew that it was pointless, but he held out his arms anyhow, as if that could stop the inevitable.

Zorukh saw him, stopped. A low rumble – was it _laughing_? – and then a fireblast.

He began to run, shouting at the terrified boys to hurry. The fire streamed over his head, licked down the street, and surrounded the two boys. As the fire swallowed them he noticed how much the younger brother looked like Mokuba.

He whirled to face Zorukh, the pharaoh forgotten. "I will never forgive you!' He clenched his fists in rage. If only he could call his Blue Eyes!

There was a sudden weight on his wrist. His duel disk? Was this … a rule of this magical world? If he pictured something clearly, if he wanted it completely, it would materialize into reality? "Blue Eyes!" He visualized pulling the card, and there it was in his hand.

"Kaiba Seto," Zorukh said. "Don't you know who I am? Do you think your puny human powers any match for me, the incarnation of infinite darkness?"

"I don't care what you are, you bastard!" he snarled. "Even though this is not my world, I won't tolerate anyone who kills children! And neither does the Blue Eyes!" He put his hand on his deck. "Come to me from the future, my Ultimate Dragon!" As he drew the cards, he saw two faint lights fly to his hand, and heard an echo of the high priest's voice: _Kisara, lend me your power!_ As the Blue Eyes Ultimate Dragon came to life above him, inhaled and gathered power for attack, he shouted, "Take this, you stupid demon! Choke on the light of my triumph!"

The blue-white stream knocked Zorukh back, almost out the city. Stunned for a moment, it stood, red eyes glowing with hate. "I'll show you the consequences of resisting me! Disappear along with your Ultimate Dragon! Zorukh Inferno!"

Kaiba braced himself. "Fight back, Blue Eyes!" He kept his rage fueled with the vision of Amelda's brother, one of many victims of Gozaburo's amoral greed, and of the two boys that Zorukh had incinerated.

The concussion wave pounded him as the energies collided. Around them, buildings disintegrated (he heard no screaming, so it seemed they were fighting where the townspeople had already evacuated).

_You don't belong here! The pharaoh doesn't want you here, either!_

Kaiba smiled despite the increasing ache in his muscles and bones. He must be winning, if Zorukh was resorting to whispered insults.

"You are all alone, human, and tiring," Zorukh taunted. "It won't be long now!" He sent out a second attack that pushed Kaiba back and began to shatter the ground.

"No!" Every breath Kaiba took burned with ash, and his skin was painfully taut from the flame. He would not win here, he now knew, but he hoped that keeping Zorukh's attention was allowing more townspeople to escape.

And then he heard the pharaoh. "Kaiba! Do now as we have done before!"

"Yugi!" He turned, saw the pharaoh streaming toward him in a halo of power. He felt a surge of energy at the sight, and threw all his determination and all his fighting spirit upwards, into his most cherished partners. He could hear Kisara, telling him to trust his heart; the high priest, urging him to abandon hatred; and the pharaoh – who had fused with the Master of Dragon Knight just as he himself had fused with the Blue Eyes – commending him for once again realizing the power of cooperation and friendship. The four of them sent the force of their souls towards Zorukh, and their triumphant solidarity filled Kaiba with pride.

A huge explosion ripped him from the others, and then he was alone, in an agonizing, deafening, absolute blackness.

.

The voices were faint. The first one made him angry.

"Darkness always wins over light – that is the truth of this world."

"No! Even if I fall, someone will inherit the light of my soul. The light won't disappear until you're defeated!"

"Humans project the darkness within them onto others. That is what gives me power."

_No!_

"Partner!"

"You've come to reveal the pharaoh's true name? I won't let you."

 _True name. Magic. Rules of magical worlds – true names bestow power._ Damn it, why couldn't he see? Why couldn't he move?

Zorukh mocking. "You can't tell the pharaoh his true name, because you can't read the hieroglyphs!"

"It's true – we remember them but we don't know how to communicate them to you!"

Yugi yelling, "Jounouchi!"

_If their life points drop, they'll die._

Yugi screaming.

Zorukh laughing. "A pity, Pharaoh, but at least you'll perish all together."

Yugi. "I won't give up! I'll find a way to tell my other self his true name!"

A new voice, female, saying, "I found the way! Use your mind to carve the hieroglyphs on the cartouche!"

And then, louder now, as the blackness around him brightened, he heard Zorukh say, "Disappear, pharaoh! With your comrades and your friends of your memory!"

He opened his eyes, lifted his head. In front of him, Yugi, Jounouchi and the others were gathered around the pharaoh, their faces intent with concentration, the pharaoh saying that it was almost done, while beyond them Zorukh was gathering an inferno.

_No! He had to stop Zorukh! They had to finish!_

He found himself suddenly standing between the group and Zorukh just as the fireball began to move. "Wheel of Defense!" he rasped out.

The wheel blocked the attack. Zorukh snarled, sending a second blast that consumed the wheel and knocked him back and to the ground.

"That's it!" he heard the pharaoh say.

Wearily, he started to push himself to his feet when a hand appeared in his field of vision. He looked up: one of the cheerleaders – Honda – had his hand out. He was about to say, _I don't need your help, I can stand up on my own_ but instead he took the hand, let it pull him to his feet, and nodded once in thanks. It felt strange.

"The seal of the name of the pharaoh is now broken! My name is – _Atem_!" The pharaoh, who moments before had seemed half-dead, was now revitalized, glowing with power, a light that made Zorukh stagger back. "Zorukh! Thanks to the gathering of all my friends, the gods will now come back to life." Lights shot out of Yugi's deck and flew to the stone statues of Obelisk, Osiris, and Ra, blazing resurrections.

Zorukh looked back at the Three, scoffing. "That is of no use! They are not powerful enough to compete against me!"

"And now," the pharaoh said calmly, "using the power of my True Name, I'll fuse the three gods!"

Kaiba was astonished. _Fuse the gods?_

From the desert behind Zorukh came a radiance, a pure Light that was more than light. Looking at it inexplicably evoked the sense of protectiveness that he had towards Mokuba, but somehow as the Light expanded it turned this emotion back on him, wrapping him in a warmth that kept folding into him, filling him with joy and strength and pride, washing away despair and fear and shame.

He looked up as an angelic being materialized behind Zorukh. "The creator of light, Horakhti!" the pharaoh said.

Kaiba realized suddenly that he was defined, not by what had happened to him, not even by the fact that he had survived it, but by every choice he made since then. He would continue to be a prisoner of past events – the loss of his parents, Gozaburo's abuse, Pegasus' betrayal – as long as he continued to leave a piece of himself buried with each of those events: but if he could find the courage to carry his memories into the light he could re-assemble himself, could walk with his whole being into the future where he and Mokuba would build their dreams.

"Disappear, darkness!"

_I miss the brother that smiles. . ._

And perhaps …

  
_I don't care if I lose! I'm having fun!_   


_Don't you have fun, Kaiba?_

perhaps …

 _"Number 24, Fu, the 'Turning Point' …_  
the first shafts of sun  
coming down from the clouds  
after a frightening storm.  
. . .the time of darkness is past …  
The light that has been banished returns …  
The old is discarded  
and the new is introduced …  
  
 _your peers and friends  
will come to join and support you._

_._

He would not be building them alone.

Zorukh was gone, and Horakhti was saying, "That is the only power that can defeat the darkness. When the strength of all is gathered, the impossible becomes possible."

The pharaoh was thanking the cheerleaders for finding his name, saying that was what enabled him to defeat Zorukh. "Aw, you don't need to be so formal!" Jounouchi was saying. "Nothing has changed! We are all still friends," Yugi added.

Kaiba took a deep breath, then walked toward their circle.

_._

The path was steeper in places than he remembered, and narrower. Bramble vines and thorny branches grabbed at him, but he pulled the machete from his belt and cleared the way.

The waterfall at the top of the path wasn't the musical, magical rivulet of clear water it had been last time, but a churning, muddy torrent that galloped over the cliff edge far above him and slammed into the rocks next to the mouth of the cave, making the stone he knelt on as treacherous as a sheet of muddy brown glass.

"Initiate _kenjutsu_ program," he said. When he saw the Immoveable Wisdom King in the cave entrance, he bowed low. "Fudou Myouou!" he called out, "I am ready!"

_._

_~ Epilogue to follow ~_

_._

_._

_._

Yes, after 8 years, the final chapter. Eight years after I started, at least two [now three] major course corrections of the plot later, my portrait of Kaiba is done. ~ Along the way, he's acquired quite a bit of invented backstory, pulled in more than a few esoteric topics, and mined some very dubious subtext.

I sometimes make the decision to put easter eggs in my stories. Usually I do this with minor details like place or street names, or less often with OCs. ~ In chapter 10 I gave Kaiba himself an easter egg that's meaningful primarily to me: when he shouts encouragement to Priest Seto's White Dragon, he's echoing an exhortation delivered in World of Warcraft by the blue dragon Kalec to players during the Sunwell raid against the demon lord Kil'jaeden: "Strike now, heroes! While he is weakened! Vanquish the Deceiver!" (Now that I think of it, that moment comes after the dragon's beloved, a girl named Anveena who is the personification of the magic of the Sunwell, sacrifices herself in a shower of holy light.) During my several years away from fandom I played a lot of WoW, and even though I've put WoW aside, Bluerose's video of SK Gaming's world-first Kil'jaeden defeat always brings me to tears. (Kinda like most of episodes 218 and 219 :p)

Note that the epilogue is entirely optional, and was mostly written for those who wanted a little more closure to the Jounouchi issue.

(05) 3 Mar 2011 ~ Horakhti tweak, AN


	11. Epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yu-Gi-Oh is the intellectual property of Kazuki Takahashi and Konami, and is being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect is intended by this fanfiction.

.

 

"Almost home." Mokuba stretched, then readjusted his headphones.

Seto nodded. Even after so many years in America, he too found that he still thought of Domino as "home." Not that he had any emotions or fond memories associated with the place, but it was his point of origin, after all.

.

The time in America had been productive. Two parks built, three more in development, several new technology and manufacturing partnerships, four humanitarian awards for "improving the life of children," and three honorary degrees (though the MIT and CalTech ones were the only ones he'd actually been somewhat flattered to receive).

He was busier now than he'd ever been, which was good, as Mokuba would soon be going off to college. He'd adjusted – after the obligatory glowering – to the fact that Mokuba wanted to go for a PhD in tree-hugging. Deep down, he was proud that the younger Kaiba was taking his own path instead of just slipping into the "family" business, even though Mokuba's demands for environmentally-and-ecologically-responsible park design and operation cut into profits. Kaiba wondered what impact college would have on Mokuba's long-distance relationship with Rebecca Hopkins, although from what Kaiba could see it wasn't that serious, being much less about romance and hormones, and much more about genius partners in crime. Rebecca was helping Mokuba pseudonymously publish his papers on Amazonian linguistics, and her grandfather frequently took Mokuba to his South American digs as an assistant interpreter. (When Seto had asked Mokuba if he planned to use his linguistics research to talk to trees, Mokuba had shrugged and said that it seemed like the ability to go native would be handy if he ever wanted to do ethnobotany fieldwork. Seto had not brought up the fact that one of Rebecca's doctorates was in linguistics.)

All in all, though, he didn't mind the Hopkinses, especially Arthur. The professor had some unusual theories, but at least he invoked science rather than magic to back them up. Their conversations lately had drifted into discussions of parenting – specifically what was colloquially known as "empty nest" – and Seto appreciated that, despite their age difference, the old man didn't talk down to him.

But then he'd always been far more comfortable with people much older or much younger than he was.

Mokuba poked him. "What are you going to do when we get back?"

"Sleep. Work."

"Why don't you come with me to visit the gang?" Mokuba had a half-smirk, as if he assumed that the invitation would be declined.

Ah yes, the gang. Yugi and friends.

The glow of solidarity that he'd felt in the aftermath of the Horakhti moment had faded within hours. He'd expected that joining Yugi's circle of friends would be awkward, but as the final voyage with Atem had made painfully clear, he'd obviously misjudged both their willingness to let him in as well as his own ability to join. By the time they arrived at the island everyone had slipped back into the old familiar patterns of hostility and estrangement. After Atem was gone everyone had gone in separate directions. KaibaLand planning took him out of the country and kept him too busy for regrets.

All in all, it was easier to let Mokuba keep in touch with them.

As the pilot announced their descent he saved the reports he had been working on. Just before he pushed the standby button he noticed the lines from the Kendo Federation credo which he had posted to his desktop:

_\- To hold in esteem human courtesy and honor. - To associate with others with sincerity. - And to forever pursue the cultivation of oneself._

He closed the laptop, then muttered to Mokuba, "Alright. But don't tell them I'm coming."

.

The party, which a laughing, texting Mokuba reported had been relocated from the Game Shop when the potential guest list had become "too large," was in the basement of an arcade. A huge banner proclaimed WELCOME HOME MOKUBA! in sparkling pink and green letters. When they walked in Mokuba was immediately surrounded by no one Kaiba recognized, strangers who clapped his brother on the back, ruffled his hair, and shouted variations on "We've missed you!"

Kaiba stood uneasily at the periphery of this mob, wondering how long etiquette required that he stay, when a familiar, slightly sarcastic voice came over his shoulder. "If you need to _work_ , there's an outlet next to that table with the coats."

He turned. One of the cheerleaders – Honda? – was pointing to the far, dimly lit half of the room. Kaiba nodded, not sure how serious the brunet had been, but Honda had already joined the crowd around Mokuba, joining the call for stories about "all the hot blonde California girls you nailed in America."

Still, since he'd been given permission. . .

He set up close to the end of the table, half hidden by the pile of coats. The wireless connection dropped every minute or so, but even if it hadn't he wasn't motivated to do anything more than pretend to work as he surreptitiously scanned the room for people he knew. He saw Ryuzaki and Haga arrive, the Roba brothers, the ocean duelist, and several red-haired women who weren't Jounouchi's sister. Finally he saw Yugi and Masaki descending the stairs, smother his brother in enthusiastic hugs, and drape him with a long striped scarf. The scarf apparently was a joke gift, as the three of them laughed for more than two minutes over it.

By the time he had memorized the clothing of everyone attending, he was willing to acknowledge that he was disappointed that Jounouchi wasn't there. The absence was puzzling; not only were the blond and Yugi generally joined at the hip, but Mokuba considered him a friend. He knew that Jounouchi's business was doing reasonably well, he certainly could have afforded a plane ticket. Was he simply too busy to come, perhaps working? Had he had a falling out with Yugi or Mokuba? Or had something more serious happened?

He logged into the KC satellite network, and between network disconnects he pulled up a satellite photo of Jou's current address, but it hadn't captured anything but street and sidewalk and door. Not unexpected, but still disheartening.

"Fuck you, Atem," he muttered. Really, all this was the departed pharaoh's fault. He had been so frantically intent during Battle City when the blond was threatened, demonstrating that he valued Jounouchi above all else. Kaiba had suspected for a while that the god-king had been more than just a little in love with the _bonkotsu,_ but that had merely underscored what Kaiba had already begun to notice, that the idiot blond had positive qualities. Certainly he'd improved as a duelist at an astonishing rate, gone from complete loser to one of the world's best in just months despite an approach that focused too much on "fun" and relied too much on luck and bravado. Kaiba shook his head, remembering Jounouchi's duel with Rishid in the quarter-finals, with the JudgeMan in Noa's virtual courtroom, the Battle Royale semi-final on Alcatraz. God, he'd been so furious at Jounouchi that day. So mouthy. So irritating.

_._

_He was ready to face them. His deck was perfect,_  
his strategy was flawless. He had bathed and eaten early,  
done isometrics, put on never-before-worn clothing. 

_But when he had left his room, completely focused,_  
a "thunk" had broken his concentration. He'd looked up  
to see Jounouchi, his arms out to either side,  
blocking the narrow hallway, his stare challenging,  
and Kaiba had been sure that the blond was here  
to slam him against the wall, grind against him,  
take his face in rough hands, and stop his breath  
with a crushing kiss. . .His heart had begun to pound,  
he had felt a flash of fear and lust coloring his face,  
but had nevertheless managed to snarl out,  
"This – is – not – the – time!" 

_"The time for what, Kaiba-kins?" Jounouchi had asked,_  
grinning. "I just came to wish you good luck,"  
and with that, his brown eyes flashing with mischief,  
he had walked away. "See you in the tower, stud."

_._

Such an asshole, to play such a mind-game less than a day after he'd so shamelessly shouted encouragement – _"Stand up Kaiba! Don't give up Kaiba! You can do it Kaiba!"_ during the duel with Noa … but it certainly was a quintessential Jounouchi moment. Over the years that memory in particular  – along with _"I've never been into anyone who wasn't into me." –_ had shaded from something that made him furious to something that made him smile a little. Of course, it really _hadn't_ been the time then: not then, not after Atem's final battle, and not afterward, when Kaiba had things to do in America.

Over the years he had subjected himself to first dates and blind dates and society dates that he always cut short out of boredom. He had revised and re-revised and refined and re-refined Ryuken, but he tired of that too. In the end, what he kept returning to over and over again were the memories of his interactions with Jounouchi. Nothing else compared, and so, now that he had enough cleared away that he could focus on Jounouchi, now was the time.

All he needed to do was to let Jounouchi know that he was ready.

Although his investigators asserted that Jounouchi wasn't sleeping with his business partner, or seeing anyone, Kaiba wasn't sure that just contacting him outright – showing up at his door, sending a letter, making a phone call – was appropriate. But neither did he have the patience to wait for the Brownian motion of fate to bring them together, and so he needed an arbitrator, a buffer, to open communications.

.

Oddly, the address was out in the country, a small house on a lake. He pushed open the gate next to a quaintly-lettered sign proclaiming _Tomoyo Cottage_ and knocked on the lilac-lacquered door.

Mai, dressed in a loose robe, greeted him with a smile. "Well, look at this! Seto Kaiba, on my doorstep with a bouquet! What a surprise! To what do I owe this honor?"

"Mai." He handed her the out-of season flowers, realizing as he did so that such a gift might be seen as a flirtatious expression of interest – which might make the questions he wanted to ask awkward. He decided to get to the point, so that misconceptions wouldn't linger. "I want to talk about Jounouchi."

Mai acted as if she hadn't heard him. "Have a seat, let me get these into some water." She went to a cabinet in the kitchen area and took a vase from a high shelf, in the process displaying an indecent amount of thigh and breast. "My roommate will be disappointed to have missed you."

"Ah." He looked down at his shoes. He had no wish to discuss her domestic arrangements, especially not when the cottage's open floor plan was dominated by a huge oval bed that overlooked the lake.

"Would you like a drink?"

"No."

"Suit yourself."

He suspected that he'd antagonized her, and gritted his teeth. "If I didn't have a meeting with a German company later today, I would, but I've learned that alcohol doesn't help my _deutsches Aussprache_."

Mai _hmm'ed_ and studied him for a moment, then said cryptically, "That must have been _some_ charm school. Hang on a sec, let me get dressed." She disappeared behind the only other door in sight.

Kaiba sighed and looked around. Despite the extravagant bed – which was draped in a lavender fabric that looked like mosquito netting – the rest of the cottage was very tastefully furnished, matching her taste in music. Faint orchestral strains, vocals in – Italian? – hummed in the perfumed air.

A shelf of glittering objects on a shelf caught his attention, and he walked over for a closer look. Geodes, almost two dozen. Black, gray and brown rocks, cut in half and polished, displaying rings of color, bands of chalcedony and jasper, interiors of quartz and amethyst crystals. He picked up a black, teardrop-shaped one: inside, a tiny green cavern arched over a frozen lake of multicolored agate.

_._

_"You know what you're like? A geode rock._  
On the outside you're all asshole.  
But some of us think that you might  
not be asshole all the way through." 

_._

"Aren't those amazing?" Mai had returned, now dressed in a short black skirt and a laced vest. "They belonged to a friend. He used to collect them, but when he stopped he said couldn't bear to sell them, so he gave them to me."

"Why did he stop?" Kaiba asked, turning to carefully put the black teardrop back in place next to its mirror half.

"He lost interest. Said it was a pointless pursuit." She was watching him, as if she wanted to make sure that they both knew that the "friend" had been Jounouchi, and that the geodes had been a symbolic stand-in for Kaiba.

He felt unaccountably stung by this. _I suppose I can't blame him._

"Anyhow," Mai said cheerfully, pouring herself a glass of wine, "I could call a friend who _might_ know where JoJo is living now, if you need to get in touch with him."

"I know where he's living."

"I see."

The music swelled dramatically, accompanying the tenor's impassioned crescendo:

 _"Ed il mio bacio scioglierà il silenzio che ti fa mia!_ _Dilegua, o notte! Tramontate, stelle! Tramontate, stelle!  
All'alba vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!"_

Kaiba, irritated that Mai was being difficult but determined not to sour the negotiation, raised an eyebrow. "He wants the night to be over so that he can 'win' by claiming someone at dawn with a kiss? What does he win?" If he kept the conversation going perhaps Mai would loosen up.

"You know this opera? You don't seem like the Puccini type."

He shrugged. "I speak enough Italian to understand."

Mai tilted her head. "It's a strange story," she said, "A sweet, kind-hearted prince falls in love – or at least in lust – with the beautiful but cruel Princess Turandot. The prince gets to marry her if he solves three riddles – but if he answers wrong he'll be beheaded."

"Charming." He picked up the jewel case, smiling faintly when he saw how much one of the costumes on the cover looked like the horrendous purple coat from Milan. "He succeeds, of course."

"Well, yes, otherwise it would all be over in the second act."

"So what are the riddles?"

"The first is _What is born each night and dies each dawn?_ The answer is 'hope'."

"Hn. Trite."

"The second is _What is warm and red but is not fire?_ The answer is – "

"– Blood? That one a child could guess."

"The third one is: _What is cold but burns like fire?_ " When Kaiba didn't answer right away, Mai smirked. "A child wouldn't get _this_ one."

"Frostbite?"

"The princess knows the prince desires her, so she asks him what ice it is that makes him burn. And the prince answers, 'You, Turandot.' "

"So he wins, and they live happily ever after?"

"Wrong. Turandot doesn't want to marry. She's the reincarnation of an ancestor that was raped and murdered, and so she would rather die than be possessed by anyone."

Despite himself, Kaiba had looked away.

Mai went on. "The prince knows that Turandot is reluctant, and so he gives her an out – if she can discover his name by morning, he'll let her kill him."

"The prince is an idiot. He already had her where he wanted her, why re-open negotiations?"

Mai chuckled. "Spoken like a true businessman." When Kaiba turned to look at her she continued. "It's true that, legally, the prince _could_ force her to marry him, but he wants to overcome her cold-hearted defensiveness and have her fall in love with him; if he can't do that, _he'd_ rather die." She took a sip of her wine. "The prince knows that true love means being willing to give the beloved as much space as they need, even so far as letting them go. No matter how painful that is." She was almost glaring at him.

Kaiba let a minute or two pass in silence before he asked, "How does it turn out?" He knew how this conversation was going to turn out, but he might as well salvage what he could.

"Turandot searches all night for the Prince's name. Finally she comes across the Prince's elderly father and Liù, a slave girl who has been taking care of him. To protect the old man, Liù says that she is the only one who knows the Prince's name. Turandot has Liù tortured, but all they can get out of her is that her love for the prince makes her strong. After that she kills herself before they can torture her more." Mai's face was hidden by her hair as she looked down into her glass of wine, but Kaiba could hear the emotion in her voice. "The prince arrives, tells Turandot she's a royal bitch, kisses her until she's wet and panting for him, and then tells her his true name – Calàf – himself."

Kaiba frowned.

"Prince Calàf and Turandot go to the emperor. Turandot tells everyone that she knows the Prince's true name, and that it is – _Love_." Mai rolled her eyes.

"That's it?" He folded his arms, "Why do people hold the ridiculousness of opera in such high esteem? The only admirable person dies. The prince is an idiot, the princess is a bitch. It's is enjoyable as noise, I suppose, as long as you don't understand what they're singing about."

"Some people say that by loving Turandot Calàf redeems her, but I don't buy it." Mai gave him a challenging look. "They were essentially strangers, from completely different worlds. Different _countries_ ," she corrected herself. "Even if the prince really _did_ love her – and in my opinion he was only hot for her anyhow – there's no way she could love him back, not with all the emotional baggage she was carrying. Relationships based purely on physical attraction never last." She drank the rest of her wine in one gulp and said bitterly, "The prince should have hooked up with Liù. She was the one who truly loved him."

So that's how it was. "Or – maybe Turandot could see that Calàf was worth loving, but just didn't know how. Maybe she'd learn, in time."

"Kaiba, people are not like computer programs – you can't leave them in the box until you get the whim to play them, or put them on pause while you go off and read the manual."

"Are you still talking about the opera?"

"You know damn well I'm not." She stood. "You really blew it with Jounouchi. He thought that treating you like a friend would sooner or later get the stick out of your ass." She shook her head. "So stupid."

"You're in love with him."

"He's my friend, and I'm not going to let him get screwed over by a bored, heartless prick who's just casting around for a new toy." She strode to the cottage door, opened it. "Go away, Kaiba."

She had her phone in hand. He suspected that she'd be calling Jounouchi as soon as he was out the door, but that was more or less the outcome he'd wanted. Of course, it would have been more useful to have her as an ally, but nothing he could say would change how she saw him. It was pointless to admit that he would have taken the key and unlocked the shackles if Jounouchi's sister hadn't got there first, or that he had locked himself in his suite to watch the security feeds from the medical bay on the Battle Ship, or that the sight of Dartz's Mirror Knights had made him reckless enough to gamble his soul.

He supposed he could have told her that the fear of winning could be just as destructive as the fear of defeat, but he had a hunch that she knew that already.

 

.

_~ The end ~_

.

.

.

 _Face, Voice, Hands_ is the next story in this series.

* * *

I would like to stress that this chapter is not anti-Mai, despite how it may look at first glance. (I like all of the YGO women and loathe character bashing.) Mai, whether you think she loves Jounouchi or not in this AU, is unquestionably his friend, and as such her intent is to protect him from re-kindling a relationship with someone she sees has already broken Jounouchi's heart once, an arrogant, selfish, heartless ice princess incapable of any emotional growth.

BTW, if you do get the urge to listen to _Nessun Dorma_ , try for Jussi Bjoerling's 1950 rendition. It's considered one of the 5 greatest opera aria recordings ever made. (I don't like opera overall, but Bjoerling's voice is Absolute Beauty. Some consider him second only to Enrico Caruso.)

The little flashback to the encounter in the hallway before the Battle City final is completely my own invention, because, although up 'til that point in the anime Kaiba had seemed to be slowly warming to Jounouchi, during and after the final he seems extra-super-pissed off. ~ I figure that it'd be fun to give him an extra reason.

Finally, I'm still not happy with the last line, but until a better one comes to me, it is what it is.

(14) 10 October 2011 ~ edit stuff.


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